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WITS AID BEAUX OF SOCIETY. 



BY 

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GRACE AND PHILIP WHARTON, 

AtJTHOBS OF " THE QUEENS OF SOCIETY." 



EWitf) JHlustratfons from Uratofngs bg 
H. K. BROWNE AND JAMES GODWIN. 

ENGRAVED BY THE BROTHERS DALEIEE. 



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AL|T1 






NEW YORK: 
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 

FRANKLIN 8QUAEE. 

1861. 



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PREFACE. 



The success of the " Queens of Society" will have pio- 
neered the way for the " Wits and Beaux," with whom, 
during the holiday time of their lives, these fair ladies were 
so greatly associated. The " Queens," whether all wits or 
not, must have been the cause of wit in others ; their influ- 
ence over dandyism is notorious : their power to make or 
mar a man of fashion, almost historical. So far, a chronicle 
of the sayings and doings of the "Wits" is worthy to serve 
as a, pendent to that of the "Queens:" happy would it be 
for society if the annals of the former could more closely 
resemble the biography of the latter. But it may not be 
so: men are subject to temptations, to failures ; to delin- 
quencies, to calamities, of which women can scarcely dream, 
and which they can only lament and pity. 

Our "Wits," too — to separate them from the "Beaux" 
— were men who often took an active part in the stirring 
events of their day ; they assumed to be statesmen, though, 
too frequently, they were only politicians. They were 
brave and loyal : indeed, in the time of the Stuarts, all the 
Wits were Cavaliers, as well as the Beaux. One hears of 
no repartee among Cromwell's followers ; no dash, no mer- 
riment in Fairfax's staff; eloquence, indeed, but no wit in 
the Parliamentarians ; and, in truth, in the second Charles's 
time, the king might have headed the list of the Wits him- 
self — such a capital man as his Majesty is known to have 
been for a wet evening or a dull Sunday ; such a famous 
teller of a story — such a perfect diner-out : no wonder that 



IV PREFACE. 

in his reign we had George Villiers, second Duke of Buck- 
ingham of that family, "mankind's epitome," who had ev- 
ery pretension to every accomplishment combined in him- 
self. No wonder that we could attract De Grammont and 
Saint Evremond to our court ; and own, somewhat to our 
discredit be it allowed, Rochester and Beau Fielding. Ev- 
ery reign has had its wits, but those in Charles's time were 
so numerous as to distinguish the era by an especial bril- 
liancy. Nor let it be supposed that these annals do not 
contain a moral application. They show how little the 
sparkling attributes herein portrayed conferred happiness ; 
how far more the rare, though certainly real touches of 
genuine feeling and strong affection, which appear here and 
there eveu in the lives of the most thoughtless "Wits and 
Beaux," elevate the character in youth, or console the spir- 
it in age. They prove how wise has been that change in 
society which now repudiates the " Wit" as a distinct class, 
and requires general intelligence as a compensation for lost 
repartees, or long obsolete practical jokes. 

" Men are not all evil :" so in the life of George Villiers, 
we find him kind-hearted and free from hypocrisy. His 
old servants — and the fact speaks in extenuation of one of 
our wildest Wits and Beaux — loved him faithfully. De 
Grammont, we all own, has little to redeem him except his 
good-nature : Eochester's latest days were almost hallowed 
by his penitence. Chesterfield is saved by his kindness to 
the Irish and his affection for his son. Horace Walpole 
had human affections, though a most inhuman pen : and 
Wharton was famous for his good-humor. 

The periods most abounding in the Wit and the Beau 
have, of course, been those most exempt from wars and ru- 
mors of wars. The Eestoration ; the early period of the 
Augustan age ; the commencement of the Hanoverian dy- 
nasty, — have all been enlivened by Wits and Beaux, who 
came to light like mushrooms after a storm of rain, as soon 



PREFACE. 



as the political horizon was clear. We have Congreve, 
■who affected to be the Beau as well as the "Wit ; Lord Her- 
vey, more of the courtier than the Beau — a Wit by inher- 
itance — a peer, assisted into a pre-eminent position by royal 
preference, and consequent prestige ; and all these men were 
the offspring of the particular state of the times in which 
they figured : at earlier periods, they would have been 
deemed effeminate ; in later ones, absurd. 

Then the scene shifts : intellect had marched forward 
gigantically: the world is grown exacting^ disputatious, 
critical, and such men as Horace Walpole and Brinsley 
Sheridan appear ; the characteristics of wit which adorned 
that age being well diluted by the feebler talents of Selwyn 
and Hook. 

Of these, and others, " table traits" and other traits, are 
here given : brief chronicles of their life's stage, over which 
a curtain has so long been dropped, are supplied carefully 
from well-established sources : it is with characters, not 
with literary history, that we deal ; and do our best to 
make the portraitures life-like, and to bring forward old 
memories, which, without the stamp of antiquity, might be 
suffered to pass into obscurity. 

Your Wit and your Beau, be he French or English, is 
no medieval personage : the aristocracy of the present day 
rank among his immediate descendants: he is a creature 
of a modern and an artificial age ; and with his career are 
mingled many features of civilized life, manners, habits, 
and traces of family history which are still, it is believed, 
interesting to the majority of English readers, as they have 
long been to 

Grace and Philip Wharton. 



CONTENTS. 



GEORGE VILLIERS, SECOND DUKE OP BUCKINGHAM. 

Signs of the Restoration. — Samuel I'epys in his Glory A royal Company. — Pepys 

"ready to weep." — The 1'layniate of Charles II George Villiers' Inheritance. — Two 

gallant young Noblemen. — The brave Francis Villiers. — After the Battle of Worcester. 
— Disguising the King. — Villiers in Hiding. — He appears as a Mountebank. — Buckings 

ham's Habits. — A daring Adventure Cromwell's saintly Daughter. — Villiers and the 

Rabbi. — The Buckingham Pictures and Estates. — York House. — Villiers returns to En- 
gland. — Poor Mary Fairfax. — Villiers in the Tower.— Abraham Cowley, the Poet. — The 

greatest Ornament of Whitehall Buckingham's Wit and Beauty Flecknoe's Opinion 

of him. — His Duel with the Earl of Shrewsbury Villiers as a- Poet. — As a Dramatist. 

— A fearful Censure! — Villiers' Influence in Parliament. — A Scene in the Lords The 

Duke of Ormond in Danger. — Colonel Blood's Outrages. — Wallingford House, and Ham 

House "Madame Ellen." — The Cabal. — Villiers again in the Tower. — A Change. — 

The Duke of York's Theatre. — Buckingham and the Princess of Orange His last Hours. 

— His Religion. — Death of Villiers The Duchess of Buckingham Page 13 

COUNT DE GRAMMONT, ST. EVREMOND, AND LORD ROCHESTER. 

De Grammont's Choice. — His Influence with Turenne. — The Church or the Army? — An 
Adventure at Lyons. — A brilliant Idea. — De Grammont's Generosity. — A Horse "for 

the Cards." — Knight-Cicisbeism. — De Grammont's first Love His witty Attacks on 

Mazarin. — Anne Lucie de la Mothe Houdancourt. — Reset with Snares. — De Grammont's 
Visits to England. — Charles II. — The Court of Charles II. — Introduction of Country- 
dances.— Norman Peculiarities. — St. Evremond, the handsome Norman. — The most beau- 
tiful Woman in Europe. — Hortense Mancini's Adventures. — Madame Mazarin's House 
at Chelsea. — Anecdote of Lord Dorset. — Lord Rochester in his Zenith. — His Courage and 

Wit. — Rochester's Pranks in the City. — Credulity, past and present " Dr. Bendo," 

and La Belle Jennings La Triste Heritiere. — Elizabeth, Countess of Rochester. Retri- 
bution and Reformation. — Rochester's Exhortation to Mr. Fanshawe.— Little Jermyn 

An incomparable Beauty. — Anthony Hamilton, De Grammont's Biographer. — The Three 
Courts. — La Belle Hamilton. — De Grammont's Description of her.— Her practical Jokes. 

— The household Deity of Whitehall. — A Chaplain in Livery. — Le Mariage forc6 De 

Grammont's last Hours. — What miglit he not have been ? 49 

BEAU FIELDING. 

On Wits and Beaux.— Scotland Yard in Charles n.'s Day Orlando of-" The Tatler." — 

Beau Fielding, Justice of the Peace. — Adonis in Search of a Wife.— The sham Widow.— 
Ways and Means — Barbara Villiers, Lady Castlemaine— Quarrels with the King.— The 
Beau's second Marriage The last Days of Fops and Beaux 65 

OF CERTAIN CLUBS AND CLUB-WITS UNDER ANNE. 

The Origin of Clubs. —The Establishment of Coffee-houses.— The October Club.— The Beef- 
steak Club.— Of certain other Clubs The Kit-kat < Tub. — The Romance of the Bowl 

The Toasts of the Kit-kat.— The Members of the Kit-kat— A good Wit, and a bad Ar- 
chitect — "Well-natured Garth."— The Poets of the Kit-kat.— Charles Montagu, Fail 
of Halifax. — Chancellor Somers. — Charles Sackville, Lord Dorset. — Less celebrated 
Wits 95 

WILLIAM CONGREVE. 

When and where was he horn?— The Middle Temple.— Congreve finds his Vocation.— 

Verses to Queen Mary.— The Tennis-court Theatre Congreve abandons the Drama. — 

Jeremy Collier.— The Immorality of the Stage. — Very improper Things.— Congreve' s. 
Writings.— Jeremy's Short Views.— Rival Theatres.— Dryden's Funeral.— A Tub-Preach- 
er.— Horoscopic Predictions.— Dryden's Solicitude for his Son.— Congreve' s Ambition - 

Anecdote of Voltaire and Congreve.— The Profession of Maecenas Congreve's private 

Life.—" Malbrook's" Daughter.— Congreve's Death and Burial 109 



V1U CONTENTS. 

BEAU NASH. 

The King of Bath.— Xash at Oxford "My Boy Dick."— Offers of Knighthood.— Doing 

Penance at York Days of Folly A very romantic Story. — Sickness and Civilization. 

Nash descends upon* Bath. — Nash's Chef-d'oeuvre. — The Ball. — Improvements in the 

Pump-room, etc. — A public Benefactor. — Life at Bath in Nash's Time. — A Compact with 
the Duke of Beaufort.— Gaming at Bath.— Anecdotes of Nash.— " Miss Sylvia."— A gen- 
erous Act. — Nash's Sun setting. — A Panegyric. — Nash's Funeral — His Characteris- 
tics Page 127 

PHILIP, DUKE OF WHARTON. 

Wharton's Ancestors — His early Years. — Marriage at sixteen — Wharton takes leave of 

his Tutor -The young Marquis and the. old Pretender. — Frolics at Paris. — Zeal for the 

Orange Cause. — A Jacobite Hero The Trial of Atterbury. — Wharton's Defense of the 

Bishop. — Hypocritical Signs of Penitence. — Sir Robert Walpole duped. — Very trying. 
— The Duke of Wharton's " Whens."— Military Glory at Gibraltar. — " Uncle Horace." 

Wharton to Uncle Horace. — The Duke's Impudence — High Treason. — Wharton's 

ready Wit. — Last Extremities. — Sad Days in Paris. — His last Journey to Spain His 

Death in a Bernardine Convent 145 

LORD HERVEY. 

George II. arriving from Hanover. — His Meeting with the Queen — Lady Suffolk. — Queen 
Caroline. — Sir Robert Walpole. — Lord Hervey. — A Set of fine Gentlemen. — An eccentric 

Race. — Carr, Lord Hervey. — A fragile Boy. — Description of George II.'s Family Anne 

Brett. — A bitter Cup. — The Darling of the Family. — Evenings at St. James's. — Freder- 
ick, Prince of Wales. — Amelia Sophia Walmoden. — Poor Queen Caroline! — Nocturnal 

Diversions of Maids of Honor Neighbor George's Orange-chest — Mary Lepel, Lady 

Hervey. — Rivalry. — Hervey' s Intimacy with Lady Mary. — Relaxations of the royal 

Household. — Bacon's Opinion of Twickenham A Visit to Pope's Villa. — The little 

Nightingale. — The Essence of small Talk. — Hervey's Affectation and Effeminacy. — Pope's 
Quarrel with Hervey and Lady Mary. — Hervey's Duel with Pulteney. — "The Death of 
Lord Hervey: a Drama."— Queen Caroline's last Drawing-room. — Her Illness and Ag- 
ony. — A painful Scene. — The Truth discovered. — The Queen's dying Bequests. — The 
King's Temper. — -Archbishop Potter is sent for. — The Duty of Reconciliation. — The 

Death of Queen Caroline. — A Change in Hervey's Life Lord Hervey's Death. — Want 

of Christianity. — Memoirs of his own Time 165 

PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE, FOURTH EARL OF CHESTERFIELD. 

The King of Table Wits. — Early Years. — Hervey's Description of his Person. — Resolutions 
and Pursuits. — Study of Oratory. — The Duties of an Embassador. — King George II.'s 
Opinion of his Chroniclers.— Life in the Country.— Melusina, Countess of Walsingham. 
— George II. and his Father's Will.— Dissolving Views.— Madame du Bouchet — The 
Broad-bottomed Administration. — Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in time of Peril. — Reform- 
ation of the Calendar — Chesterfield House. — Exclusiveness. — Recommending "John- 
son's Dictionary."— "Old Samuel" to Chesterfield.— Defensive Pride of the "respect- 
able Hottentot.'" — The Glass of Fashion. — Lord Scarborough's Friendship for Chesterfield. 

— The Death of Chesterfield's Son. — His Interest in his Grandsons. — "I must go and 

rehearse my Funeral."— Chesterfield's Will What is a Friend ?— Les Manieres nobles. 

— Letters to his Son 203 

THE ABBE SCARRON. 

An Eastern Allegory.— Who comes here?— A mad Freak and its Consequences.— Making 
an Abbo of him.— The May-fair of Paris.— Scarron's Lament to Pellisson.— The Office 
of the Queen's Patient.— " Give me a simple. Benefice." — Scarron's Description of him- 
self.— Improvidence and Servility.— The Society at Scarron's.— The witty Conversation. 

— Franjoise D'Aubigne's Debut. — The sad Story of La Belle Indienne. —Matrimonial 
Considerations.— " Scarron's W r ife will live forever."— Petits Soupers.— Scarron's last 
Moments. — A Lesson for gay and grave 227 

FRANCOIS, DUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULT AND THE DUG DE SAINT-SIMON. 

Rank and Good-breeding. — The Hotel de Rochefoucault. — Racine and his Plays. — La 
Rochcfoucault's Wit and Sensibility.— Saint-Simon's Youth.— Looking out for a' Wife.— 
Saint-Simon's Court Life — The History of Louise de la Valliere.— A mean Act of Louis 
Quatorze. — All has passed away ! — Saint-Simon's Memoirs of his own Time 245 

HORACE WALPOLE. 

The Commoners of England — Horace's Regret for the Death of his Mother.—" Little Hor- 
ace" in Arlington Street. — Introduced to George I.— Characteristic Anecdote of George I. 
— Walpole's Education. — Schoolboy Days.— Boyish Friendships. — Companionship of 
Gray. — A dreary Doom. — W'alpole's Description of youthful Delights. — Anecdote of 



CONTENTS. IX 

Pope and Frederick of Wales. — The Pomfrets. — Sir Thomas Robinson's Ball. — Political 
Squibs. — That " Rogue Walpole." — Sir Robert's Retirement from Office. — The splendid 
Mansion of Houghton. — Sir Robert's Love of Gardening. — What we owe to the " Grandes 
Tours." — George Vertue. — Men of one Idea. — The noble Picture-gallery at Houghton. 

— Sir Robert's Death The Granville Faction. — A very good Quarrel. — Twickenham. — 

Strawberry Hill. — The Recluse of Strawberry. — Portraits of the Digby Family. — Sacri- 
lege. — Mrs. Darner's Models. — The Long Gallery at Strawberry.— The Chapel. — "A 
dirty little Thing." — The Society around Strawberry Hill. — Anne Seymour Conway. — 
A Man who never doubted. — Lady Sophia Pernor's Marriage. — Horace in Favor. — Anec- 
dote of Sir William Stanhope. — A paper House. — Walpole's Habits. — Why did he not 
Marry? — " Dowagers as plenty as Flounders." — Catherine Hyde, Duchess of Queensber- 
ry. — Anecdote of Lady Granville. — Kitty Clive. — Death of Horatio Walpole. — George, 
third Farl of Orford. — A Visit to Houghton. — Family Misfortunes. — Poor Chatterton. — 
Walpole's Concern with Chatterton. — Walpole in Paris. — Anecdote of Madame Geoffrin. 
— "-Who's that Mr. Walpole?" — The Miss Berrys. — Horace's two "Straw Berries." — 
Tapping a new Reign.— The Sign of the Gothic Castle. — Growing old with Dignity. — 
Succession to an Earldom. — Walpole's last Hours. — Let us not be ungrateful. . . Page 255 

GEORGE SELWYN. 

A Love of Horrors. — Anecdotes of Selwyn's Mother. — Selwyn's College Days. — Orator Hen- 
ley. — Selwyn's blasphemous Freak. — The Profession of a Wit. — The Thirst for Hazard. 
— Reynolds's Conversation-piece. — Selwyn's Eccentricities and Witticisms. — A most im- 
portant Communication. — An amateur Headsman. — The 1- loquenee of Indifference. — ■ 
Catching a Housebreaker. — The Family of the Selwyns The Man of the People. — Sel- 
wyn's parliamentary Career. — True Wit. — Some of Selwyn's witty Sayings. — The Sov- 
ereignty of the People. — On two Kinds of Wit. — Selwyn's Home for Children. — Mie-Mie, 

the little Italian Selwyn's little Companion taken from him. — His later Days and 

Death SOT 

RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. 

Sheridan a Dunce Boyish Dreams of literary Fame. — Sheridan in Love. — A Nest of Night- 
ingales. — The Maid of Bath Captivated by Genius. — Sheridan's Elopement with "■Ce- 
cilia." — His Duel with Captain Matthews. — Standards of P.idieule. — Painful family Es- 
trangements. — Enters Drury Lane. — Success of the Famous " School for Scandal." — 
Opinions of Sheridan and his Influence. — The Literary Club. — Anecdote of Garrick'a 
Admittance. — Origin of "the Rejected Addresses." — New Flights. — Political Ambition. 
— The gaming Mania. — Almack' s. — Brookes'. — Black-balled. — Two Versions of the Elec- 
tion Trick St. Stephen's won. — Vocal Difficulties. — Leads a double Life. — Pitt's vul- 
gar Attack. — Sheridan's happy Retort. — Grattan's Quip. — Sheridan's Sallies. — The Trial 
of Warren Hastings. — Wonderful Effect of Sheridan's Eloquence. — The supreme Effort. 
—The Star culminates.— Native Taste for Swindling. — A shrewd but graceless Oxon- 
ian. — Duns outwitted. — The Lawyer jockeyed. — Adventures with Bailiffs. — Sheridan's 

Powers of Persuasion. — House of Commons Greek Curious Mimicry. — The royal boon 

Companion Lights and Shadows of Depravity. — Street Frolics at Night. — An old Tale. 

— The Fray in St. Giles'. — Sheridan's gradual Downfall. — Unopened Letters. — An odd 
Incident Reckless Extravagance. — Sporting Ambition — Like Father like Son. — A se- 
vere and witty Rebuke. — Convivial Excesses of a past Day. — Worth wins at last. — Bit- 
ter Pangs. — The Scythe of Death. — The fair, loving, neglected Wife. — Debts of Honor. — 
Drury Lane burned. — The Owner's Serenity. — Misfortunes never come singly. — The 
Whitbread Quarrel. — Ruined, undone, and almost forsaken. — The dead Man arrested. — 
The Stories fixed on Sheridan. — Extempore Wit and inveterate Talkers 329 

BEAU BRUMMELL. 

Two popular Sciences. — "Buck Brummell" at Eton. — Investing his Capital — Young Cor- 
net Krummell. — The Beau's Studio. — The Toilet. — "Creasing down." — Sneers and 
Snuff-boxes. — A great Gentleman. — Anecdotes of Brummell. — " Don't forget Brum : 
Goose at Four!" — Offers of Intimacy resented. — Never in Love.— Brummell out Hunt- 
ing. — Anecdote of Sheridan and Brummell. — The Beau's poetical Efforts. — The Value, 
of a crooked Sixpence. — The Breach with the Prince of Wales. — "Who's your fat 
Friend?" — The Climax is reached. — The Black-mail of Calais. — George the Greater and 
George the Less. — An extraordinary Step. — Down the Hill of Life. — A miserable Old 
Age. — In the Hospice du bon Sauveur. — O young Men of this Age, be warned ! 381 

THEODORE EDWARD HOOK. 

The greatest of modern Wits. — What Coleridge said of Hook. — Hook's Family. — Redeem- 
ing Points. — Versatility.— Varieties of Hoaxing. — The Black-wafered Horse. — The Ber- 
ners Street Hoax.— Success of the Scheme. — The Strop of Hunger. — Kitchen Examina- 
tions. — The wrong House. — Angling for an Invitation. — The Hackney-coach Device. — 
The Plots of Hook and Mathews. — Hook's Talents as an Improvisatore. — The Gift be- 
comes his Bane. — Hook's Novels. — College Fun. — Baiting a Proctor. — The punning 
Faculty. — Official Life opens. — Troublesome Pleasantry. — Charge of Embezzlement. — 

A2 



X CONTENTS. 

Misfortune Doubly disgraced. — No Effort to remove the Stain. — Attacks on the Queen. 

— An incongruous Mixture. — Specimen of the Ramsbottoni Letters. — Hook's Scurrility. 
— Fortune and Popularity The End Page 405 

SYDNEY SMITH. 

The " wise Wit." — Oddities of the Father. — Verse-making at Winchester.— Curate Life on 
Salisbury Plain. — Old Edinburgh. — Its social and architectural Features. — Making 
Love metaphysically. — The old Scottish Supper. — The Men of Mark passing away. — The 

Band of young Spirits. — Brougham's early Tenacity. — Fitting up Conversations "Old 

School" Ceremonies. — The Speculative Society A brilliant Set. — Sydney's Opinion of 

his Friends. — Holland House. — Preacher at the '•'Foundling." — Sydney's "Grammar 
of Life." — The Picture Mania. — A Living comes at last — The Wit's Ministry. — The 

first Visit to Foston le Clay Country Quiet The universal Scratcher. — Country Life 

and Country Prejudice. — The genial Magistrate. — Glimpse of Edinburgh Society Mrs. 

Grant of Laggan A Pension Difficulty. — Jeffrey and Cockburn.— Craigcrook. — Sydney 

Smith's Cheerfulness His rheumatic Armor. — No Bishopric. — Becomes Canon of St. 

Paul's. — Anecdotes of Lord Dudley. — A sharp Reproof. — Sydney's Classification of So- 
ciety. — Last Stroke of Humor 433 

GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON, LORD MELCOMBE. 

A dinner-giving lordly Poet. — A Misfortune for a Man of Society. — Brandenburgh House. 
— "The Diversions of the Morning." — Johnson's Opinion of Foote.— Churchill and the 
"Rosciad." — Personal Ridicule in its proper Light. — Wild Specimen of the Poet. — Wal- 
pole on Dodington's "Diary." — The best Commentary on a Man's Life. — Leicester 
House. — Grace Boyle. — Elegant Modes of passing Time. — A sad Day.— What does Dod- 
ington come here for? — The Veteran Wit, Beau, and PoUtician. — Defend us from our 
Executors and Editors 469 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

PAGE 

BEAU FIELDING AND THE SHAM WIDOW (Frontispiece.) 

VILLIERS IN DISGUISE— THE MEETING WITH HIS SISTER 24 

DE GRAMMONT'S MEETING WITH LA BELLE HAMILTON 77 

WHARTON'S ROGUISH PRESENT 149 

A SCENE BEFORE KENSINGTON PALACE— GEORGE H. AND QUEEN CARO- 
LINE 1G7 

POPE AT HIS VILLA— DISTINGUISHED VISITORS 186 

A ROYAL ROBBER 210 

SCARRON AND THE WITS— FIRST APPEARANCE OF LA BELLE INDIENNE 237 

STRAWBERRY IHLL FROM THE THAMES 276 

SELWYN ACKNOWLEDGES "THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PEOPLE" 322 

THE FAMOUS "LITERARY CLUB" 346 

A TREASURE FOR A LADY— SHERIDAN AND THE LAWYER 357 

THE BEST THING BEAU BRUMMELL EVER SAID 396 

THEODORE HOOK'S ENGINEERING FROLIC 417 

A DROLL SCENE AT SYDNEY SMITH'S 448 

SYDNEY SMITH'S WITTY ANSWER TO THE OLD PARISH CLERK 453 



THE 



WITS AND BEAUX OF SOCIETY. 



GEORGE VIIXIERS, SECOND DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM. 

Samuel Pepys, the weather-glass of his time, hails the first 
glimpse of the Restoration of Charles II. in his usual quaint 
terms and vulgar sycophancy. 

" To Westminster Hall," says he ; " where I heard how the 
Parliament had this day dissolved themselves, and did pass 
very cheerfully through the Hall, and the Speaker without his 
mace. The whole Hall was joyful thereat, as well as them- 
selves ; and now they begin to talk loud of the king." And 
the evening was closed, he further tells us, with a large bon- 
fire in the Exchange, and people called out, " God bless King- 
Charles !" 

This was in March, 1660 ; and during that spring, Pepys was 
noting down how he did not think it possible that " my Lord 
Protector," Richard Cromwell, should come into power again; 
how there were great hopes of the king's arrival ; how Monk, 
the Restore!*, was feasted at Mercers' Hall ; (Pepys's own 
especial) ; how it was resolved that a treaty be offered to the 
king, privately ; how he resolved to go to sea with "my lord ;" 
and how, while they lay at Gravesend, the great affair which 
brought back Charles Stuart was virtually accomplished. Then, 
with various parentheses, inimitable in their way, Pepys carries 
on his narrative. He has left his father's " cutting-room" to 
take care of itself; and finds his cabin little, though his bed is 
convenient, but is certain, as he rides at anchor with " my lord" 
in the ship, that the king " must of necessity come in," and the 
vessel sails round and anchors in Lee Roads. " To the castles 
about Deal, where our fleet" {our fleet, the saucy son of a tai- 
lor !) " lay and anchored ; great was the shoot of guns from the 
castles and ships, and our answers." Glorious Samuel ! in his 
element, to be sure. 

Then the wind grew high : he began to be " dizzy and 
squeamish ;" nevertheless employed " Lord's Day" in looking 



14 SIGNS OF THE RESTORATION. 

through the lieutenant's glass at two good merchantmen, and 
the women in them, " being pretty handsome ;" then in the 
afternoon he first saw Calais, and was pleased, though it was 
at a great distance. All eyes were looking across the Chan- 
nel just then — for the king was at Flushing ; and, though the 
" Fanatiques" still held their heads up high, and the Cavaliers 
also talked high on the other side, the cause that Pepys was 
bound to still gained ground. 

Then " they begin to speak freely of King Charles ;" church- 
es in the city, Samuel declares, were setting up his arms ; mer- 
chant-ships — more important in those days — were hanging out 
his colors. He hears, too, how the Mercers' Company were 
making a statue of his gracious Majesty, to set up in the Ex- 
change. Ah ! Pepys's heart is merry ; he has forty shillings 
(some shabby perquisite) given him by Captain Cowes of the 
" Paragon ;" and " my lord" in the evening " falls to singing" 
a song upon the Rump to the tune of the " Blacksmith."" 

The hopes of the Cavalier party are hourly increasing, and 
those of Pepys we may be sure also ; for Pim, the tailor, spends 
a morning in his cabin " putting a great many ribbons to a 
sail." And the king is to be brought over suddenly, "my 
lord" tells him : and indeed it looks like it, for the sailors are 
drinking Charles's health in the streets of Deal, on their knees; 
" which, methinks," says Pepys, " is a little too much ;" and 
" methinks" so, worthy Master Pepys, also. 

Then, how the news of the Parliamentary vote of the king's 
declaration was received ! Pepys becomes eloquent. 

" He that can fancy a fleet (like ours) in her pride, with 
pendants loose, guns roaring, caps flying, and the loud ' Vive 
le JRoi V echoed from one ship's company to another ; he, and 
he only, can apprehend the joy this inclosed vote was received 
with, or the blessing he thought himself possessed of that 
bore it." 

Next, orders come for " my lord" to sail forthwith to the 
king; and the painters and tailors set to work, Pepys super- 
intending, " cutting out some pieces of yellow cloth in the fash- 
ion of a crown and C. R. ; and putting it upon a fine sheet" — 
and that is to supersede the States' arms, and is finished and 
set up. And the next day, on May 14, the Hague is seen 
plainly by us, " my lord going up in his night-gown into the 
cuddy." 

And then they land at the Hague ; some " nasty Dutch- 
men" come on board to offer their boats, and get money, 
which Pepys does not like ; and in time they find themselves 
in the Hague, " a most neat place in all respects ;" salute the 
Queen of Bohemia and the Prince of Orange — afterward Wil- 



A ROYAL COMPANY. 15 

liam III. — and find at their place of sapper nothing but a "sal- 
let" and two or three bones of mutton provided for ten of us, 
" which was very strange." Nevertheless, on they sail, hav- 
ing returned to the fleet, to Schevelling ; and, on the 23d of 
the month, go to meet the king ; who, " on getting into the 
boat, did kiss my lord with much affection." And " extraor- 
dinary press of good company," and great mirth all day, an- 
nounced the Restoration. Nevertheless Charles's clothes had 
not been, till this time, Master Pepys is assured, worth forty 
shillings — and he, as a connoisseur, w T as scandalized at the fact. 

And now, before we proceed, let us ask w T ho worthy Sam- 
uel Pepys was, that he should pass such stringent comments 
on men and manners ? His origin was lowly ; his family an- 
cient; his father having followed, until the Restoration, the 
calling of a tailor. Pepys, vulgar as he was, had nevertheless 
received a university education ; first entering Trinity Col- 
lege, Cambridge, as a sizar. To our w T onder we find him mar- 
rying furtively and independently ; and his wife, of fifteen, was 
glad with her husband to take up an abode in the house of a 
relative, Sir Edward Montagu, afterward Earl of Sandwich, 
the "my lord" under whose shadow Samuel Pepys dwelt in 
reverence. By this nobleman's influence, Pepys forever left 
the " cutting-room ;" he acted first as Secretary (always as 
toad-eater, one would fancy), then became a clerk in the Ad- 
miralty; and as such went, after the Restoration, to live in 
Seething Lane, in the parish of St. Olave, Hart Street — and in 
St. Olave his mortal part was ultimately deposited. 

So much for Pepys. See him now, in his full-bottomed wig, 
and best cambric neckerchief, looking out for the king and his 
suit, who are coming on board the " Nazeby." 

" Up, and made myself as fine as I could, with the finning 
stockings on, and wide canons that I bought the other day at 
the Hague." So began he the day. "All day nothing but 
lords and persons of honor on board, that we were exceeding 
full. Dined in great deal of state, the royalle company by 
themselves in the coache, which w r as a blessed sight to see." 
This royal company consisted of Charles, the Dukes of York 
and Gloucester, his brothers, the Queen of Bohemia, the Prin- 
cess Royal, the Prince of Orange, afterward William III. — all 
of whose hands Pepys kissed, after dinner. The King and 
Duke of York changed the names of the ships. The " Romp- 
ers," as Pepys called the Parliamentarians, had given one the 
name of the " Nazeby ;" that was now christened the " Charles ;" 
" Richard" was changed into " James." The " Speaker" into 
" Mary," the " Lambert" was " Henrietta," and so on. How 
merry the king must have been while he thus turned the 



16 PEPY«S "ready to weep." 

Roundheads, as it were, off the ocean ; and how he walked 
here and there, up and down (quite contrary to what Samuel 
Pepys "expected"), and fell into discourse of his escape from 
Worcester, and made Samuel " ready to weep" to hear of his 
traveling four days and three nights on foot, up to his knees 
in dirt, with " nothing but a green coat and pair of breeches 
on" (worse and worse, thought Pepys), and a pair of country 
shoes that made his feet sore ; and how, at one place, he was 
made to drink by the servants, to show he was not a Round- 
head ; and how, at another place — and Charles, the best teller 
of a story in his own dominions, may here have softened his 
tone — the master of the house, an inn-keeper, as the king was 
standing by the fire, with his hands on the back of a chair, 
kneeled down and kissed his hand " privately," saying he could 
not ask him who he was, but bid " God bless him, where he 
Was going !" 

Then, rallying after this touch of pathos, Charles took his 
hearers over to Fecamp, in France — thence to Rouen, where, 
he said, in his easy, irresistible way, " I looked so poor that 
the people went into the rooms before I went away, to see if I 
had not stolen something or other." 

With what reverence and sympathy did our Pepys listen ! 
but he was forced to hurry off to get Lord Berkeley a bed ; and 
with " much ado" (as one may believe) he did get " him to 
bed with my Lord Middlesex ;" so, after seeing these two 
peers of the realm in that undignified predicament — two in a 
bed — " to my cabin again," where the company were still talk- 
ing of the king's difficulties, and how his Majesty was fain to 
eat a piece of bread and cheese out of a poor body's pocket ; 
and, at a Catholic house, how he lay a good while " in the 
Priest's Hole, for privacy." 

In all these hairbreadth escapes — of which the king spoke 
with infinite humor and good feeling — one name w T as perpetu- 
ally introduced : George — George Villiers, Villers, as the royal 
narrator called him ; for the name was so pronounced formerly. 
And well he might ; for George Villiers had been his playmate, 
classfellow, nay, bedfellow sometimes, in priests' holes ; their 
names, their haunts, their hearts, were all assimilated ; and 
misfortune had bound them closely to each other. To George 
Villiers let us now turn ; he is waiting for his royal master on 
the other side of the Channel — in England. And a strange 
character have we to deal with : 

"A man so various, that he seemed to be 
Not one, but all mankind's epitome : 
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, 
Was every thing by starts, and nothing long; 



GEORGE VILLIERS INHERITANCE. 17 

But, in the course of one revolving moon, 
Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon."* 

Such was George Villiers : the Alcibiades of that age. Let us 
trace one of the most romantic, and brilliant, and unsatisfac- 
tory lives that has ever been written. 

George Villiers was born at Wallingford House, in the par- 
ish of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, on the 30th January, 1627. 
The Admiralty now stands on the site of the mansion in which 
he first saw the light. His father was George Villiers, the fa- 
vorite of James I. and Charles I. ; his mother, the Lady Kath- 
erine Manners, daughter and heiress of Francis, Earl of Rut- 
land. Scarcely was he a year old, when the assassination of 
his father, by Felton, threw the affairs of his family into con- 
fusion. His mother, after the Duke of Buckingham's death, 
gave birth to a son, Francis ; who was, subsequently, savagely 
killed by the Roundheads, near Kingston. Then the Duchess 
of Buckingham very shortly married again, and uniting her- 
self to Randolph Macdonald, Earl of Antrim, became a rigid 
Catholic. She was therefore lost to her children, or rather, 
they were lost to her ; for King Charles I., who had promised 
to be a " husband to her, and a father to her children," removed 
them from her charge, and educated them with the royal 
princes. 

The youthful peer soon gave indications of genius ; and all 
that a careful education could do, was directed to improve his 
natural capacity under private tutors. He went to Cambridge ; 
and thence, under the care of a preceptor named Aylesbury, 
traveled into France. He was accompanied by his young, 
handsome, fine-spirited brother, Francis ; and this was the sun- 
shine of his life. His father had indeed left him, as his biog- 
rapher Brian Fairfax expresses it, "the greatest name in En- 
gland ; his mother, the greatest estate of any subject." With 
this inheritance there had also descended to him the wonder- 
ful beauty, the matchless grace, of his ill-fated father. Great 
abilities, courage, fascination of manners, were also his; but 
he had not been endowed with firmness of character, but was 
at once energetic and versatile. Even at this age, the quali- 
ties which became his ruin were clearly discoverable. 

George Villiers was recalled to England by the troubles 
which drove the King to Oxford, and which converted that 
academical city into a garrison, its under-graduates into sol- 
diers, its ancient halls into barrack-rooms. Villiers was on 
this occasion entered at Christ Church : the youth's best feel- 
ings were aroused, and his loyalty was engaged to one to 
whom his father owed so much. He was now a young man 

* Dry den. 



18 TWO GALLAKT YOUNG NOBLEJUEX. 

of twenty-one years of age — able to act for himsejf ; and he 
went heart and soul into the cause of his sovereign. Never 
was there a gayer, a more prepossessing Cavalier. He could 
charm even a Roundhead. The harsh and Presbyterian-mind- 
ed Bishop Burnet, has told us that " he was a man of a noble 
presence ; had a great liveliness of wit, and a peculiar faculty 
of turning every thing into ridicule, with bold figures and nat- 
ural descriptions." How invaluable he must have been in the 
Common-rooms at Oxford, then turned into guard-rooms, his 
eye upon some unlucky volunteer Don, who had put off his 
clerkly costume for a buff jacket, and could not manage his 
drill. Irresistible as his exterior is declared to have been, the 
original mind of Villiers was even far more influential. De 
Grammont tells us, " he was extremely handsome, but still 
thought himself much more so than he really was ; although 
he had a great deal of discernment, yet his vanities made him 
mistake some civilities as intended for his person which were 
only bestowed on his wit and drollery." 

But this very vanity, so unpleasant in an old man, is only 
amusing in a younger wit. While thus a gallant of the court 
and camp, the young nobleman proved himself to be no less 
brave than witty. Juvenile as he was, with a brother still 
younger, they fought on the royalist side at Lichfield, in the 
storming of the Cathedral Close. For thus allowing their 
lives to be endangered, their mother blamed Lord Gerard, one 
of the Duke's guardians ; while the Parliament seized the pre- 
text of confiscating their estates, which were afterward re- 
turned to them, on account of their being under age at the 
time of confiscation. The youths were then placed under the 
care of the Earl of Northumberland, by whose permission they 
traveled in France and Italy, where they appeared — their es- 
tates having been restored — with princely magnificence. Nev- 
ertheless, on hearing of the imprisonment of Charles I. in the 
Isle of Wight, the gallant youths returned to England, and 
joined the army under the Earl of Holland, who was defeated 
near Nonsuch, in Surrey. 

A sad episode in the annals of these eventful times is pre- 
sented in the fate of the handsome, brave Francis Villiers. 
His murder, for one can call it by no other name, shows how 
keenly the personal feelings of the Roundheads were engaged 
in this national quarrel. Under most circumstances, English- 
men would have spared the youth, and respected the gallantry 
of the free young soldier, who, planting himself against an 
oak-tree which grew in the road, refused to ask for quarter, 
but defended himself against several assailants. But the name 
of Villiers was hateful in Puritan ears. " Hew them down, 



THE BRAVE FRANCIS VILLIERS. 19 

root and.branch !" was the sentiment that actuated the sol- 
diery. His very loveliness exasperated their vengeance. At 
last, " with nine wounds on his beautiful face and body," says 
Fairfax, " he was slain." " The oak-tree," writes the devoted 
servant, "is his monument," and the letters of F. V. were cut 
in it in his day. His body was conveyed by water to York 
House, and was entombed with that of his father, in the Chapel 
of Henry VII. 

His brother fled toward St. Neot's, where he encountered a 
strange kind of peril. Tobias Rustat attended him ; and "was 
with him in the rising in Kent for King Charles I., wherein 
the Duke was engaged ; and they, being put to the flight, the 
Duke's helmet, by a brush under a tree, was turned upon his 
back, and tied so fast with a string under his throat, that with- 
out the present help of T. R.," writes Fairfax, "it had undoubt- 
edly choked him, as I have credibly heard."* 

While at St. Neot's, the house in which Villiers had taken 
refuge was surrounded with soldiers. He had a stout heart, 
and a dextrous hand ; he took his resolution ; rushed out upon 
his foes, killed the officer in command, galloped off and joined 
the Prince in the Downs. 

The sad story of Charles I. was played out ; but Villiers re- 
mained stanch, and was permitted to return and to accompany 
Prince Charles into Scotland. Then came the battle of "Wor- 
cester in 1651 : there Charles II. showed himself a worthy de- 
scendant of James IV. of Scotland. He resolved to conquer 
or die : with desperate gallantry the English Cavaliers and the 
Scotch Highlanders seconded the monarch's valiant onslaught 
on Cromwell's horse, whose invincible Life Guards were al- 
most driven back by the shock. But they were not seconded ; 
Charles II. had his horse twice shot under him, but, nothing 
daunted, he was the last to tear himself away from the field, 
and then only upon the solicitations of his friends. 

Charles retired to Kidderminster that evening. The Duke 
of Buckingham, the gallant Lord Derby, Wilmot, afterward 
Earl of Rochester, and some others, rode near him. They 
were followed by a small body of horse. Disconsolately they 
rode on northward, a faithful band of sixty being resolved to 
escort his Majesty to Scotland. At length they halted on Kin- 
ver Heath, near Kidderminster, their guide having lost the 

* The day after the battle at Kingston the Duke's estates were confiscated 
(8th July, 1648). — Nichols' History of Leicestershire, iii. 213; who also says 
that the Duke offered marriage to one of the daughters of Cromwell, but was 
refused. He went abroad in 1648, but returned with Charles II. to Scotland 
in 1650, and again escaped to France after the battle of Worcester, 1651. 
The sale of the pictures would seem to have commenced during his first exile. 



20 AFTER THE BATTLE OF WORCESTER. 

way. In this extremity Lord Derby said that he had been re- 
ceived kindly at an old house in a secluded woody country, 
between Tong Castle and Brewood, on the borders of Staf- 
fordshire. It was named "Boscobel," he said ; and that word 
has henceforth conjured up to the mind's eye the remembrance 
of a band of tired heroes riding through woody glades to an 
ancient house, where shelter was given to the worn-out horses 
and scarcely less harassed riders. 

But not so rapidly did they in reality proceed. A Catho- 
lic family, named Giffard, were living at White-Ladies, about 
twenty-six miles from Worcester. This was only about half 
a mile from Boscobel: it had been a convent of Cistercian nuns, 
whose long white cloaks of old had once been seen, ghost-like, 
amid forest glades or on hillock green. The White-Ladies had 
other memories to grace it besides those of holy vestals or of 
unholy Cavaliers. From the time of the Tudors, a respecta- 
ble family named Somers had owned the White-Ladies, and in- 
habited it since its white-garbed tenants had been turned out 
and the j)lace secularized. " Somers's House," as it was called 
(though, more happily, the old name has been restored), had 
received Queen Elizabeth on her progress. The richly cultiva- 
ted old conventual gardens had supplied the Queen with some 
famous i^ears, and, in the fullness of her approval of the fruit, 
she had added them to the City arms. At that time one of 
these vaunted pear-trees stood securely in the market-place of 
Worcester. 

At the White-Ladies Charles rested for half an hour ; and 
here he left his garters, waistcoat, and other garments, to 
avoid discovery, ere he proceeded. They were long kept as 
relics. 

The mother of Lord Somers had been placed in this old 
house for security, for she was on the eve of giving birth to 
the future statesman, who was born in that sanctuary just at 
this time. His father at that very moment commanded a 
troop of horse in Cromwell's army, so that the risk the Cava- 
liers ran was imminent. The King's horse was led into the 
hall. Day Avas dawning ; and the Cavaliers, as they entered 
the old conventual tenement, and saw the sunbeams on its 
walls, perceived their peril. A family of servants named Pen- 
derell held various offices there and at Boscobel. William 
took care of Boscobel ; George was a servant at White-La- 
dies ; Humphrey was the miller to that house ; Richard lived 
close by, at Hebbal Grange. He and William were called into 
the royal presence. Lord Derby then said to them, " This is 
the King ; have a care of him, and preserve him as thou didst 
me." 



DISGUISING THE KING. VILLIERS IN HIDING. 21 

Then the attendant courtiers began undressing the King. 
They took off his buff-coat, and put on him a " noggon coarse 
shirt," and a green suit and another doublet — Richard Pen- 
derell's woodman's dress. Lord Wilmot cut his sovereign's 
hair with a knife, but Richard Penderell took up his shears 
and finished the work. " Burn it," said the king ; but Rich- 
ard kept the sacred locks. Then Charles covered his dark face 
with soot. Could any thing have taken away the expression 
of his half-sleepy, half-merry eyes ? 

They departed, atid half an hour afterward Colonel Ashen- 
hurst, with a troop of Roundhead horse, rode up to the White- 
Ladies. The King, meantime, had been conducted by Richard 
Penderell into a coppice-wood, with a bill-hook in his hands for 
defense and disguise. But his followers were overtaken near 
Newport; and here Buckingham, with Lords Talbot and Lev- 
iston, escaped, and henceforth, until Charles's wanderings were 
transferred from England to France, George Villiers was sep- 
arated from the Prince. Accompanied by the Earls of Derby 
and Lauderdale, and by Lord Talbot, he proceeded northward, 
in hopes of joining General Leslie and the Scotch horse. But 
their hopes were soon dashed : attacked by a body of Round- 
heads, Buckingham and Lord Leviston were compelled to leave 
the high road, to alight from their horses, and to make their 
way to Bloore Park, near Newport, where Villiers found a shel- 
ter. He was soon, however, necessitated to depart : he put on 
a laborer's dress ; he deposited his George, a gift from Henri- 
etta Maria, with a companion, and set off for Billstrop, in Not- 
tinghamshire, one Matthews, a carpenter, acting as his guide ; 
at Billstrop he Avas welcomed by Mr. Hawley, a Cavalier ; and 
from that place he went to Brookesby, in Leicestershire, the 
original seat of the Villiers family, and the birth-place of his 
father. Here he was received by Lady Villiers — the widow, 
probably, of his father's brother, Sir William Villiers — one of 
those contented country squires who not only sought no dis- 
tinction, but scarcely thanked James I. when he made him a 
baronet. Here might the hunted refugee see, on the open 
battlements of the church, the shields on which were exhibit- 
ed united quarterings of his father's family with those of his 
mother ; here, listen to old tales about his grandfather, good 
Sir George, who married a serving- woman in his deceased wife's 
kitchen ;* and that serving-woman became the leader of fash- 

* Sir George Villiers's second wife was Mary, daughter of Antony Beau- 
mont, Esq., of Glenfield (Nichols' Leicestershire, iii. 193), who was son of 
Wm. Beaumont, Esq., of Cole Orton. She afterward was married succes- 
sively to Sir Wm. Rayner and Sir Thomas Compton, and was created Count- 
ess of Buckingham in 1618. 



22 VILLIERS APPEARS AS A MOUNTEBANK. 

ions in the court of James. Here he might ponder on the vi- 
cissitudes which marked the destiny of the house of Villiers, 
and wonder what should come next. 

That the spirit of adventure was strong within him, is shown 
by his daring to go up to London, and disguising himself as a 
mountebank. He had a coat made, called a "Jack Pudding 
Coat :" a little hat was stuck on his head, with a fox's tail in 
it, and cocks' feathers here and there. A wizard's mask one 
day, a daubing of flour another, completed the disguise it was 
then so usual to assume : witness the long traffic held at Ex- 
eter Change by the Duchess of Tyrconnel, Frances Jennings, 
in a white mask, selling laces and French gew-gaws, a trader 
to all appearance, but really carrying on political intrigues ; 
every one went to chat with the "White Milliner," as she was 
called, during the reign of William and Mary. The Duke next 
erected a stage at Charing Cross — in the very face of the stern 
Rumpers, who, with long faces, rode past the sinful man each 
day as they came ambling up from the Parliament House. A 
band of puppet-players and violins set up their shows; and mu- 
sic covers a multitude of incongruities. The ballad was then 
the great vehicle of personal attack, and Villiers's dawning 
taste for poetry was shown in the ditties which he now com- 
posed, and in which he sometimes assisted vocally. While all 
the other Cavaliers were forced to fly, he thus bearded his en- 
emies in their very homes : sometimes he talked to them face 
to face, and kept the sanctimonious citizens in talk till they 
found themselves sinfully disposed to laugh. But this vagrant 
life had serious evils: it broke down all the restraints which 
civilized society naturally and beneficially imposes. The Duke 
of Buckingham, Butler, the author of Hudibras, writes, "rises, 
eats, goes to bed by the Julian account, long after all others 
that go by the new style, and keeps the same hours with owls 
and the Antipodes. He is a great observer of the Tartar cus- 
toms, and never eats till the great cham, having dined, makes 
proclamation that all the world may go to dinner. He does 
not dwell in his house, but haunts it like an evil spirit, that 
walks all night, to disturb the family, and never appears by 
day. He lives perpetually benighted, runs out of his life, and 
loses his time as men do their Avays in the dark : and as blind 
men are led by their dogs, so he is governed by some mean 
servant or other that relates to his pleasures. He is as incon- 
stant as the moon which he lives under; and although he does 
nothing but advise with his pillow all day, he is as great a 
stranger to himself as he is to the rest of the world. His mind 
entertains all things that come and go ; but like guests and 
strangers, they are not welcome if they stay long. This lays 




VILLIEKS IN DISGUISE— THE MEETING WITH HIS SISTEE. 



A DAEING ADVENTURE. 25 

him open to all cheats, quacks, and impostors, who apply to 
every particular humor while it lasts, and afterward vanish. 
He deforms nature while he intends to adorn her, like Indians 
that hang jewels in their lips and noses. His ears are perpet- 
ually drilling with a fiddlestick, and endures pleasures with less 
patience than other men do their pains." 

The more effectually to support his character as a mounte- 
bank, Villiers sold mithridate and galbanum plasters: thou- 
sands of spectators and customers thronged every day to see 
and hear him. Possibly many guessed that beneath all this 
fantastic exterior some ulterior project was concealed ; yet he 
remained untouched by the City Guards. Well did Dryden 
describe him : 

"Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking, 
Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking. 
Blest madman, who could every hour employ 
With something new to wish or to enjoy !" 

His elder sister, Lady Mary Villiers, had married the Duke 
of Richmond, one of the loyal adherents of Charles I. The 
duke was, therefore, in durance at "Windsor, while the duch- 
ess was to be placed under strict surveillance at Whitehall. 

Villiers resolved to see her. Hearing that she was to pass 
into Whitehall on a certain day, he set up his stage where she 
could not fail to perceive him. He had something important 
to say to her. As she drew near, he cried out to the mob that 
he would give them a song on the Duchess of Richmond and 
the Duke of Buckingham : nothing could be more acceptable. 
" The mob," it is related, " stopped the coach and the duchess. 
. . . Nay, so outrageous were the mob, that they forced the 
duchess, who was then the handsomest woman in England, to 
sit in the boot of the coach, and to hear him sing all his im- 
pertinent songs. Having left off singing, he told them it was 
no more than reason that he should present the duchess with 
some of the songs. So he alighted from his stage, covered all 
over with papers and ridiculous little pictures. Having come 
to the coach, he took off a black piece of taffeta, which he al- 
ways wore over one of his eyes, when his sister discovered im- 
mediately who he was, yet had so much presence of mind as 
not to give the least sign of mistrust ; nay she gave him some 
very opprobrious language, but was very eager at snatching 
the papers he threw into her coach. Among them was a 
packet of letters, which she had no sooner got but she went 
forward, the duke, at the head of the mob, attending and hal- 
looing her a good way out of the town." 

A still more daring adventure was c utemplated also bv 

B 



26 ckomwell's saintly daughter. 

this young, irresistible duke. Bridget Cromwell, the eldest 
daughter of Oliver, was, at that time, a bride of twenty-six 
years of age; having married, in 1647, the saintly Henry Ire- 
ton, Lord Deputy of Ireland. Bridget was the pattern hero- 
ine of the '•'-unco guid" the quintessence of all propriety; the 
impersonation of sanctity ; an ultra republican, who scarcely 
accorded to her father the modest title of Protector. She was 
esteemed by her party a "personage of sublime growth:" 
" humbled, not exalted," according to Mrs. Hutchinson, by her 
elevation : " nevertheless," says that excellent lady, " as my 
Lady Ireton was walking in the St. James's Park, the Lady 
Lambert, as proud as her husband, came by where she was, 
and as the present princess always hath precedency of the 
relict of the dead, so she put by my Lady Ireton, who, not- 
withstanding her piety and humility, was a little grieved at 
the affront." 

After this anecdote one can not give much credence to this 
lady's humility : Bridget was, however, a woman of powerful 
intellect, weakened by her extreme, and to use a now common 
term, crotchety opinions. Like most esprits forts, she was 
easily imposed upon. One day this paragon saw a mounte- 
bank dancing on a stage in the most exquisite style. His fine 
shape, too, caught the attention of one who assumed to be 
above all folly. It is sometimes fatal to one's peace to look 
out of a window ; no one knows what sights may rivet or dis- 
please. Mistress Ireton was sitting at her window unconscious 
that any one with the hated and malignant name of " Villiers" 
was before her. After some unholy admiration, she sent to 
speak to the mummer. The duke scarcely knew whether to 
trust himself in the power of the bloodthirsty Ireton's bride or 
not — yet his courage — his love of sport — prevailed. He visit- 
ed her that evening : no longer, however, in his jack-pudding 
coat, but in a rich suit, disguised with a cloak over it. He 
wore still a plaster over one eye, and was much disposed to 
take it off, but prudence forbade ; and thus he stood in the 
presence of the prim and saintly Bridget Ireton. The partic- 
ulars of the interview rest on his statement, and they must 
not, therefore, be accepted implicitly. Mistress Ireton is said 
to have made advances to the handsome incognito. What a 
triumph to a man like Villiers, to have intrigued with my Lord 
Protector's sanctified daughter ! But she inspired him with 
disgust. He saw in her the presumption and hypocrisy of 
her father; he hated her as Cromwell's daughter and Ire- 
ton's wife. He told her, therefore, that he was a Jew, and 
could not by his laws become the paramour of a Christian 
woman. The saintly Bridget stood amazed ; she had impru- 



VILLIEKS AND THE KABBI. 27 

dently let him into some of the most important secrets of her 
party. A Jew ! It was dreadful ! But how could a person 
of that persuasion be so strict, so strait-laced? She probably 
entertained all the horror of Jews which the Puritanical party 
cherished as a virtue; forgetting the lessons of toleration and 
liberality inculcated by Holy Writ. She sent, however, for a 
certain Jewish Rabbi to converse with the stranger. What 
was the Duke of Buckingham's surprise, on visiting her one 
evening, to see the learned doctor armed at all points with the 
Talmud, and thirsting for dispute, by the side of the saintly 
Bridget. He could noways meet such a body of controversy ; 
but thought it best forthwith to set off for the Downs. Be- 
fore he departed he wrote, however, to Mistress Ireton, on the 
plea that she might wish to know to what tribe of Jews he 
belonged. So he sent her a note written with all his native 
wit and point.* 

Buckingham now experienced all the miseries that a man 
of expensive pleasures with a sequestrated estate is likely to 
endure. One friend remained to watch over his interests in 
England. This was John Traylman, a servant of his late fa- 
ther's ; who was left to guard the collection of pictures made 
by the late duke, and deposited in York House. That collec- 
tion was, in the opinion of competent judges, the third in point 
of value in England, being only inferior to those of Charles I. 
and the Earl of Arundel. 

It had been bought, with immense expense, partly by the 
duke's agents in Italy, the Mantua Gallery supplying a great 
portion — partly in France — partly in Flanders ; and to Flan- 
ders a great portion was destined now to return. Secretly 
and laboriously did old Traylman pack up and send off these 
treasures to Antwerp, where now the gay youth whom the 
aged domestic had known from a child was in want and exile. 
The pictures were eagerly bought by a foreign collector named 
Duart. The proceeds gave poor Villiers bread ; but the noble 
works of Titian and Leonardo da Yinci, and others, were lost 
forever to England. 

It must have been very irritating to Yilliers to know that 
while he just existed abroad, the great estates enjoyed by his 
father were being subjected to pillage by Cromwell's soldiers, 
or sold for pitiful sums by the Commissioners appointed by 
Parliament to break up and annihilate many of the old prop- 
erties in England. Burleigh-on-the-Hill, the stately seat on 
which the first duke had lavished thousands, had been taken 
by the Roundheads. It was so large, and presented so long a 
line of buildings that the Parliamentarians could not hold it 

* This incident is taken from Madame Dunois' Memoirs, part i. p. 86. 



28 YORK HOUSE. 

without leaving in it a great garrison and stores of ammuni- 
tion. It was therefore burnt, and the stables alone occupied; 
and those even were formed into a house of unusual size. 
York House was doubtless marked out for the next destruct- 
ive decree. There was something in the very history of this 
house which might be supposed to excite the wrath of the 
Roundheads. Queen Mary (whom we must not, after Miss 
Strickland's admirable life of her, call Bloody Queen Mary, 
but who will always be best known by that unpleasant title) 
had bestowed York House on the See of York, as a compen- 
sation for York House, at Whitehall, which Henry VIII. had 
taken from Wolsey. It had afterward come into possession 
of the Keepers of the Great Seal. Lord Bacon was born in 
York House, his father having lived there ; and the 

"Greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind," 

built here an aviary w T hich cost £300. When the Duke of 
Lennox wished to buy York House, Bacon thus wrote to him : 
" For this you will pardon me : York House is the house where 
my father died, and where I first breathed ; and there will I 
yield my last breath, if it so please God and the King." It 
did not, however, please the King that he should ; the house 
was borrowed only by the first Duke of Buckingham from the 
Archbishop of York, and then exchauged for another seat on 
the plea that the duke would want it for the reception of for- 
eign potentates, and for entertainments given to royalty. 

"The duke pulled it down : and the house, which was erect- 
ed as a temporary structure, was so superb that even Pepys, 
twenty years after it had been left to bats and eobwebs, speaks 
of it in raptures, as of a place in which the great duke's soul was 
seen in every chamber. On the walls were shields on which 
the arms of Manners and of Villiers — peacocks and lions — were 
quartered. York House was never, however, finished ; but, 
as the lover of old haunts enters Buckingham Street in the 
Strand, he will perceive an ancient water-gate, beautifully pro- 
portioned, built by Inigo Jones — smoky, isolated, impaired — 
but still speaking volumes of remembrance of the glories of 
the assassinated duke, who had purposed to build the whole 
house in that style. 

" Yorschaux" as he called it — York House — the French em- 
bassador had written word to his friends at home, " is the most 
richly fitted up of any that I saw." The galleries and state 
rooms were graced by the display of the Roman marbles, both 
busts and statues, which the first duke had bought from Ru- 
bens ; while in the gardens the Cain and Abel of John of Bo- 
logna, given by Philip IV. of Spain to King' Charles, and by 



VILLIEKS RETURNS TO ENGLAND. 29 

him bestowed on the elder George Villiers, made that fair 
pleasaunce famous. It was doomed — as were what were call- 
ed the " superstitious" pictures iu the house — to destruction : 
henceforth all was in decay and neglect. " I went to see York 
House and gardens," Evelyn writes in 1655, "belonging to the 
former greate Buckingham, but now much ruined through 
neglect." 

Traylman, doubtless, kept George Villiers the younger in 
full possession of all that was to happen to that deserted tene- 
ment in which the old man mourned for the departed, and 
thought of the absent. 

The intelligence which he had soon to communicate was all- 
important. York House was to be occupied again ; and Crom- 
well and his coadjutors had bestowed it on Fairfax. The blow 
was perhaps softened by the reflection that Fairfax was a man 
of generous temper ; and that he had an only daughter, Mary 
Fairfax, young, and an heiress. Though the daughter of a 
Puritan, a sort of interest was attached, even by Cavaliers, to 
Mary Fairfax, from her having, at five years of age, followed 
her father through the civil wars on horseback, seated before a 
maid-servant ; and having, on her journey, frequently fainted, 
and was so ill as to have been left in a house by the roadside, 
her father never expecting to see her again. 

In reference to this young girl, then about eighteen years of 
age, Buckingham now formed a plan. He resolved to return 
to England disguised, and to offer his hand to Mary Fairfax, 
and so recover his property through the influence of Fairfax, 
He was confident of his own attractions ; and, indeed, from 
every account, he appears to have been one of those reckless, 
handsome, speculative characters that often take the fancy of 
better men than themselves. "He had," says Burnet, "no 
sort of literature, only he was drawn into chemistry ; and for 
some years he thought he was very near the finding of the 
philosopher's stone, which had the effect that attends on all 
such men as he was, when they are drawn in, to lay out for it. 
He had no principles of religion, virtue, or friendship ; pleas- 
ure, frolic, or extravagant diversion was all he laid to heai't. 
He w T as true to nothing ; for he was not true to himself. He 
had no steadiness nor conduct ; he could keep no secret, nor 
execute any design without spoiling it ; he could never fix his 
thoughts, nor govern his estate, though then the greatest in 
England. He was bred about the king, and for many years he 
had a great ascendant over him ; but he spoke of him to all 
persons with that contempt, that at last he drew a lasting dis- 
grace upon himself. And he at length ruined both body and 
mind, fortune and reputation equally." 



SO l'OOK MAKY FAIRFAX. 

This was a sad prospect for poor Mary Fairfax, but certain- 
ly if in their choice 

Weak women go astray, 



Their stars are more in fault than they," 

and she was less to blame in her choice than her father, who 
ought to have advised her against the marriage. Where and 
how they met is not known. Mary was not attractive in per- 
son : she was in her youth little, brown, and thin, but became 
a " short fat body," as De Grammont tells us, in her early mar- 
ried life ; in the later period of her existence, she was de- 
scribed by the Vicomtesse de Longueville as a " little round 
crumpled woman, very fond of finery ;" and she adds that, on 
visiting the duchess one day, she found her, though in mourn- 
ing, in a kind of loose robe over her, all edged and laced with 
gold. So much for a Puritan's daughter. 

To this insipid personage the duke presented himself. She 
soon liked him, and in spite of his outrageous infidelities, con- 
tinued to like him after their marriage. 

He carried his point : Mary Fairfax became his wife on the 
6th of September, 1657, and, by the influence of Fairfax, his 
estate, or, at all events, a portion of the revenues, aboitt £4000 
a year, it is said, were restored to him. Nevertheless, it is 
mortifying to find that in 1672, he sold York House, in which 
his father had taken such pride, for £30,000. The house was 
pulled down ; streets were erected on the gardens : George 
Street, Villiers Street, Duke Street, Buckingham Street, Off 
Alley, recall the name of the ill-starred George, first duke, and 
of his needy, profligate son ; but the only trace of the real 
greatness of the family importance thus swept away is in the 
motto inscribed on the point of old Inigo's water-gate, toward 
the street : " Ftdei coticula crux.' 1 '' It is sad for all good royal- 
ists to reflect that it was not the rabid Roundhead, but a de- 
generate Cavalier, who sold and thus destroyed York House. 

The marriage with Mary Fairfax, though one of interest 
solely, was not a mesalliance : her father was connected by 
the female side with the Earls of Rutland ; he was also a man 
of a generous spirit, as he had shown, in handing over to the 
Countess of Derby the rents of the Isle of Man, which had 
been granted to him by the Parliament. In a similar spirit 
he was not sorry to restore York House to the Duke of Buck- 
ingham. 

Cromwell, however, was highly exasperated by the nuptials 
between Mary Fairfax and Villiers, which took place at Nun- 
Appleton, near York, one of Fairfax's estates. The Protector 
had, it is said, intended Villiers for one of his own daughters. 



ABRAHAM COWLEY, THE POET. 31 

Upon what plea he acted it is not stated ; he committed Vil- 
liers to the Tower, where he remained until the death of Oliver, 
and the accession of Richard Cromwell. 

In vain did Fairfax solicit his release : Cromwell refused it, 
and Villiers remained in durance until the abdication of Rich- 
ard Cromwell, when he was set at liberty, but not without the 
following conditions, dated February 21st, 1658-9: — 

" The humble petition of George Duke of Buckingham was 
this day read. Resolved that George Duke of Buckingham, 
now prisoner at Windsor Castle, upon his engagement upon 
his honor at the bar of this House, and upon the engagement 
of Lord Fairfax in £20,000, that the said duke shall peaceably 
demean himself for the future, and shall not join with, or abet, 
or have any correspondence with, any of the enemies of the 
Lord Protector, and of his Commonwealth, in any of the parts 
beyond the sea, or within this commonwealth, shall be dis- 
charged of his imprisonment and restraint ; and that the Gov- 
ernor of Windsor Castle be required to bring the Duke of 
Buckingham to the bar of this House on Wednesday next, to 
engage his honor accordingly. Ordered, that the security of 
£20,000, to be given by the Lord Fairfax, on the behalf of the 
Duke of Buckingham, be taken in the name of His Highness 
the Lord Protector." 

During his incarceration at Windsor, Buckingham had a 
companion, of whom many a better man might have been en- 
vious : this was Abraham Cowley, an old college friend of the 
duke's. Cowley was the son of a grocer, and owed his en- 
trance into academic life to having been a King's Scholar at 
Westminster. One day he happened to take up from his moth- 
er's parlor window a copy of Spenser's "Faerie Queene." He 
eagerly perused the delightful volume, though he was then 
only twelve years old : and this impulse being given to his 
mind, became at fifteen a reciter of verses. His " Poetical 
Blossoms," published while he was still at school, gave, how- 
ever, no foretaste of his future eminence. He proceeded to 
Trinity College, Cambridge, where his friendship with Villiers 
was formed; and where, perhaps, from that circumstance, Cow- 
ley's predilections for the cause of the Stuarts was ripened into 
loyalty. 

No two characters could be more dissimilar than those of 
Abraham Cowley and George Villiers. Cowley was quiet, 
modest, sober, of a thoughtful, philosophical turn, and of an 
affectionate nature; neither boasting of his own merits nor de- 
preciating others. He was the friend of Lucius Cary, Lord 
Falkland ; and yet he loved, though he must have condemned, 
George Villiers. It is not unlikely that, while Cowley impart- 



32 THE GREATEST ORNAMENT OF WHITEHALL. 

ed his love of poetry to Villiers, Villiers may have inspired the 
pensive and blameless poet with a love of that display of wit 
then in vogue, and heightened that sense of humor which speaks 
forth in some of Cowley's productions. Few authors suggest so 
many new thoughts, really his own, as Cowley. "His works," 
it has been said, " are a flower-garden run to weeds, but the 
flowers are numerous and brilliant, and a search after them will 
well repay the pains of a collector who is not too indolent or 
fastidious." 

As Cowley and his friend passed the weary hours in durance, 
many an old tale could the poet tell the peer of stirring times; 
for Cowley had accompanied Charles I. in many a perilous jour- 
ney, and had protected Queen Henrietta Maria in her escape 
to France: through Cowley had the correspondence of the roy- 
al pair, when separated, been carried on. The poet had before 
suffered imprisonment for his loyalty ; and, to disguise his act- 
ual occupation, had obtained the degree of Doctor of Medicine, 
and assumed the character of a physician, on the strength of 
knowing the virtues of a few plants. 

Many a laugh, doubtless, had Buckingham at the expense of 
Dr. Cowley : however, in later days, the duke proved a true 
friend to the poet, in helping to procure for him the lease of a 
farm at Chertsey, from the queen, and here Cowley, rich upon 
£300 a year, ended his days. 

For some time after Buckingham's release, he lived quietly 
and respectably at Nun-Appleton, with General Fairfax and the 
vapid Mary. But the Restoration — the first dawnings of which 
have been referred to in the commencement of this biography 
— ruined him, body and mind. 

He was made a Lord of the Bedchamber, a Member of the 
Privy Council, and afterward Master of the Horse,* and Lord 
Lieutenant of Yorkshire. He lived in great magnificence at 
Wallingford House, a tenement next to York House, intend- 
ed to be the habitable and useful appendage to that palace. 

He was henceforth, until he proved treacherous to his sov- 
ereign, the brightest ornament of Whitehall. Beauty of per- 
son was hereditary : his father was styled the "handsomest-bod- 
ied man in England," and George Villiers the younger equal- 
ed George Villiers the elder in all personal accomplishments. 
When he entered the Presence-Chamber all eyes followed him; 
every movement was graceful and stately. Sir John Reresby 
pronounced him " to be the finest gentleman he ever saw." 
"He was born," Madame Dunois declared, "for gallantry and 
magnificence." His wit was faultless, but his manners engag- 

* The duke became Master of the Horse in 1668 : he paid £20,000 to the 
Duke of Albemarle for the post. 



Buckingham's wit and beauty. 3'S 

ing ; yet his sallies often descended into buffoonery, and he 
spared no one in his merry moods. One evening a play of 
Dryden's was represented. An actress had to spout forth this 
line — 

"My wound is great because it is so small!" 

She gave it out with pathos, paused, and was theatrically dis- 
tressed. Buckingham was seated in one of the boxes. He 
rose; all eyes were fixed upon a face well known in all gay as- 
semblies ; in a tone of burlesque he answered, 

"Then 'twould be greater were it none at all." 

Instantly the audience laughed at the duke's tone of ridicule, 
and the poor woman was hissed oft' the stage. 

The king himself did not escape Buckingham's shafts ; while 
Lord Chancellor Clarendon fell a victim to his ridicule ; noth- 
ing could withstand it. There, not in that iniquitous gallery at 
Whitehall, but in the king's privy chambers, Villiers might be 
seen in all the radiance of his matured beauty. His face was 
long and oval, with sleepy, yet glistening eyes, over which large 
arched eyebrows seemed to contract a brow on which the curls 
of a massive wig (which fell almost to his shoulders) hung low. 
His nose was long, well formed, and flexible ; his lips thin and 
compressed, and defined, as the custom was, by two very short, 
fine, black patches of hair, looking more like strips of sticking- 
plaster than a mustache. As he made his reverence his rich 
robes fell over a faultless form. He was a beau to the very fold 
of the cambric band round his throat ; with long ends of the 
richest, closest point that was ever rummaged out from a for- 
eign nunnery to be placed on the person of this sacrilegious 
sinner. 

Behold, now, how he changes. Villiers is Villiers no lon- 
ger. He is Clarendon, walking solemnly to the Court of the 
Star Chamber : a pair of bellows is hanging before him for 
the purse ; Colonel Titus is walking with a fire-shovel on his 
shoulder, to represent a mace; the king, himself a capital mim- 
ic, is splitting his sides with laughter ; the courtiers are fairly 
in a roar. Then how he was wont to divert the king with his 
descriptions ! " Ipswich, for instance," he said, " was a town 
without inhabitants — a river it had without waters — streets 
without names; and it was a place where asses wore boots:" 
alluding to the asses, when employed in rolling Lord Here- 
ford's bowling-green, having boots on their feet to prevent 
their injuring the turf. 

Flecknoe, the poet, describes the duke at this period, in 
" Euterpe Revived" — 

B2 



34 ANNA MARIA, COUNTESS OP SHREWSBURY. 

" The gallant'st person, and the noblest minde, 
In all the world his prince could ever finde, 
Or to participate his private cares, 
Or bear the public weight of his affairs, 
Like well-built arches, stronger with their weight, 
And well-built minds, the steadier with their height ; 
Such was the composition and frame 
O' the noble and the gallant Buckingham." 

The praise, however, even in the duke's best days, was over- 
charged. Villiers was no "well-built arch," nor could Charles 
trust to the fidelity of one so versatile for an hour. Besides, 
the moral character of Villiers must have prevented him, even 
in those days, from bearing " the public weight of affairs." 

A scandalous intrigue soon proved the unsoundness of Fleck- 
noe's tribute. Among the most licentious beauties of the court 
was Anna Maria, Countess of Shrewsbury, the daughter of Rob- 
ert Brudenel, Earl of Cardigan, and the wife of Francis, Earl of 
Shrewsbury: among many shameless women she was the most 
shameless, and her face seems to have well expressed her mind. 
In the round, fair visage, with its languishing eyes, and full, 
pouting mouth, there is something voluptuous and bold. The 
forehead is broad, but low ; and the wavy hair, with its tendril 
curls, comes down almost to the fine arched eyebrows, and then, 
falling into masses, sets off white shoulders which seem to des- 
ignate an inelegant amount of embonpoint. There is nothing 
elevated in the whole countenance, as Lely has painted her, and 
her history is a disgrace to her age and time. 

She had numerous lovers (not in the refined sense of the 
word), and, at last, took up with Thomas Killigrew. He had 
been, like Villiers, a royalist : first a page to Charles I., next 
a companion of Charles II., in exile. He married the fair Ce- 
cilia Croft ; yet his morals were so vicious that even in the 
Court of Venice to which he was accredited, in order to bor- 
row money from the merchants of that city, he was too profli- 
gate to remain. He came back with Charles II., and was 
Master of the Revels, or King's Jester, as the court considered 
him, though without any regular appointment, during his fife : 
the butt, at once, and the satirist of Whitehall. 

It was Killigrew's wit and descriptive powers which, when 
heightened by wine, were inconceivably great, that induced 
Villiers to select Lady Shrewsbury for the object of his admi- 
ration. When Killigrew perceived that he was supplanted by 
Villiers, he became frantic with rage, and poured out the bit- 
terest invectives against the countess. The result was that, one 
night, returning from the Duke of York's apartments at St. 
James's, three passes with a sword were made at him through 
his chair, and one of them pierced his arm. This, and other 



VILLIEKS AS A POET. 35 

occurrences, at last aroused the attention of Lord Shrewsbury, 
who had hitherto never doubted his wife : he challenged the 
Duke of Buckingham ; and his infamous wife, it is said, held 
her paramour's horse, disguised as a page. Lord Shrewsbury- 
was killed,* and the scandalous intimacy went on as before. 
No one but the queen, no one but the Duchess of Bucking- 
ham, appeared shocked at this tragedy, and no one minded 
their remarks, or joined in their indignation : all moral sense 
was suspended, or wholly stifled ; and Villiers gloried in his 
depravity, more witty, more amusing, more fashionable than 
ever ; and yet he seems, by the best known and most extolled 
of his poems, to have had some conception of what a real and 
worthy attachment might be. 

The following verses are to his " Mistress." 

" What a dull fool was I 

To think so gross a lie, 
As that I ever was in love before ! 
I have, perhaps, known one or two, 

With whom I was content to be 

At that which they call keeping company. 
But after all that they could do, 

I still could be with more. 

Their absence never made me shed a tear ; 

And I can truly swear, 
That, till my eyes first gazed on you, 

I ne'er beheld the thing I could adore. 

"A world of things must curiously be sought: 

A world of things must be together brought 
To make up charms which have the power to move, 
Through a discerning eye, true love ; 
That is a master-piece above 

What only looks and shape can do ; 

There must be wit and judgment too, 
Greatness of thought, and worth, which draw, 
From the whole world, respect and awe. 

" She that woidd raise a noble love must find 
Ways to beget a passion for her mind ; 
She must be that which she to be would seem. 
For all true love is grounded on esteem : 
Plainness and truth gain more a generous heart 
Than all the ci'ooked subtleties of art. 
She must be — what said I ? — she must be you: 
None but yourself that miracle can do. 
At least, I'm sure, thus much I plainly see, 
None but yourself e'er did it upon me. 
'Tis you alone that can my heart subdue, 
To you alone it always shall be true." 



* The duel with the Earl of Shrewsbury took place on the 17th of Janu- 
arv. 1G67-8. 



ob VILLIERS AS A DRAMATIST. 

The next lines are also remarkable for the delicacy and hap- 
py turn of the expressions — 

"Though Phillis, from prevailing charms, 
Have forc'd my Delia from my arms, 
Think not your conquest to maintain 
By rigor or unjust disdain. 
In vain, fair nymph, in vain you strive, 
For Love doth seldom Hope survive. 
My heart may languish for a time, 
As all beauties in their prime 
Have justified such cruelty, 
By the same fate that conquered me. 
When age shall come, at whose command 
Those troops of beauty must disband — 
A rival's strength once took away, 
What slave's so dull as to obey ? 
But if you'll learn a noble way 
To keep his empire from decay, 
And there forever fix your throne, 
Be kind, but kind to me alone." 

Like his father, who ruined himself by building, Villiers had 
a monomania for bricks and mortar, yet he found time to write 
" The Rehearsal," a play on which Mr. Reed in his " Dramatic 
Biography" makes the following observation : " It is so per- 
fect a masterpiece in its way, and so truly original, that, not- 
withstanding its prodigious success, even the task of imitation, 
which most kinds of excellence have invited inferior geniuses 
to undertake, has appeared as too arduous to be attempted 
with regard to this, which through a whole century stands 
alone, notwithstanding that the very plays it was written ex- 
pressly to ridicule are forgotten, and the taste it was meant to 
expose totally exploded." 

The reverses of fortune which brought George Villiers to 
abject misery were therefore, in a very great measure, due to 
his own misconduct, his depravity, his waste of life, his per- 
version of noble mental powers : yet in many respects he was 
in advance of his age. He advocated, in the House of Lords, 
toleration to Dissenters. He wrote a " Short Discourse on the 
Reasonableness of Men's having a Religion, or Worship of 
God ;" yet, such was his inconsistency, that, in spite of these 
works, and of one styled a " Demonstration of the Deity," 
written a short time before his death, he assisted Lord Roch- 
ester in his atheistic poem upon " Nothing." 

Butler, the author of Hudibras, too truly said of Villiers 
"that he had studied the whole body of 'vice /" a most fearful 
censure — a most significant description of a bad man. " His 
parts," he adds, " are disproportionate to the whole, and like 
a monster, he has more of some, and less of others, than he 



VILLIEES' INFLUENCE IN PARLIAMENT. 37 

should have. He has pulled down all that nature raised in 
him, and built himself up again after a model of his own. He 
has dammed up all those lights that nature made into the no- 
blest prospects of the world, and opened other little blind 
loopholes backward, by turning day into night, and night into 
day." 

The satiety and consequent misery produced by this terrible 
life are ably described by Butler. And it was perhaps partly 
this wearied, worn-out spirit that caused Villiers to rush madly 
into politics for excitement. In 1666 he asked for the office 
of Lord President of the North ; it was refused : he became 
disaffected, raised mutinies, and, at last, excited the indigna- 
tion of his too-indulgent sovereign. Charles dismissed him 
from his office, after keeping him for some time in confine- 
ment. After this epoch little is heard of Buckingham but 
what is disgraceful. He was again restored to Whitehall, 
and, according to Pepys, even closeted with Charles, while the 
Duke of York was excluded. A certain acquaintance of the 
duke's remonstrated with him upon the course which Charles 
now took in Parliament. " How often have you said to me," 
this person remarked, " that the king was a weak man, unable 
to govern, but to be governed, and that you could command 
him as you liked ? Why do you suffer him to do these things ?" 

" Why," answered the duke, " I do suffer him to do these 
things, that I may hereafter the better command him." A 
reply which betrays the most depraved principle of action, 
whether toward a sovereign or a friend, that can be express- 
ed. His influence was for some time supreme, yet he became 
the leader of the opposition, and invited to his table the dis- 
contented peers, to whom he satirized the court, and condemn- 
ed the king's want of attention to business. While the thea- 
tre was ringing with laughter at the inimitable character of 
Bayes in the " Rehearsal," the House of Lords was listening 
with profound attention to the eloquence that entranced their 
faculties, making wrong seem right, for Buckingham was ever 
heard wiUi attention. 

Taking into account his mode of existence, " which," says 
Clarendon, " was a life by night more than by day, in all the 
liberties that nature could desire and wit invent," it was as- 
tonishing how extensive an influence he had in both Houses 
of Parliament. His rank and condescension, the pleasantness 
of his humors and conversation, and the extravagance and 
keenness of his wit, unrestrained by modesty or religion, 
caused persons of all opinions and dispositions to be fond of 
his company, and to imagine that these levities and vanities 
would wear off with age, and that there would be enough of 



38 A SCENE IN THE LORDS. 

good left to make him useful to his country, for which he pre- 
tended a wonderful affection. 

But this brilliant career was soon checked. The varnish 
over the hollow character of this extraordinary man was event- 
ually rubbed off. We find the first hint of that famous coali- 
tion styled the Cabal, in Pepys's Diary, and henceforth the 
duke must be regarded as a ruined man. 

"He" (Sir H.Cholmly) "tells me that the Duke of Buck- 
ingham his crimes, as far as he knows, are his being of a ca- 
bal with some discontented persons of the late House of Com- 
mons, and opposing the desires of the king in all his matters in 
that House; and endeavoring to become popular, and advis- 
ing how the Commons' House should proceed, and how he 
would order the House of Lords. And he hath been endeavor- 
ing to have the king's nativity calculated ; which was done, 
and the fellow now in the Tower about it. . . . This silly lord 
hath provoked, by his ill carriage, the Duke of York, my Lord 
Chancellor, and all the great persons, and therefore most like- 
ly will die." 

One day, in the House of Lords, during a conference be- 
tween the two Houses, Buckingham leaned rudely over the 
shoulder of Henry Pierrepont, Marquis of Dorchester. Lord 
Dorchester merely removed his elbow. Then the duke asked 
him if he was uneasy. " Yes," the marquis replied, adding, 
"the duke- dared not do this if he were any where else." 
Buckingham retorted, " Yes, he would ; and he was a better ' 
man than my lord marquis ;" on which Dorchester told him 
that he lied. On this Buckingham struck off Dorchester's hat, 
seized him by the periwig, pulled it aside, and held him. The 
Lord Chamberlain and others interposed, and sent them both 
to the Tower. Nevertheless, not a month afterward, Pepys 
speaks of seeing the duke's play of " The Chances" acted at 
Whitehall. " A good play," he condescends to say, " I find it, 
and the actors most good in it ; and pretty to hear Knipp sing 
in the play very properly ' All night I weepe,' and sung it ad- 
mirably. The whole play pleases me well : and most of all, the 
sight of many fine ladies, among others, my Lady Castle- 
maine and Mrs. Middleton." 

The whole management of public affairs was, at this period, 
intrusted to five persons, and hence the famous combination, 
the united letters of which formed the word " Cabal :" — Clif- 
ford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale. Their 
reprehensible schemes, their desperate characters, rendered 
them the opprobrium of their age, and the objects of censure 
to all posterity. While matters were in this state a daring 
outrage, which spoke fearfully of the lawless state of the times, 



THE DUKE OF ORMOND IN DANGER. 39 

was ascribed, though wrongly, to Buckingham. The Duke of 
Ormoncl, the object of his inveterate hatred, was at that time 
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Colonel Blood — a disaffected dis- 
banded officer of the Commonwealth, who had been attainted 
for a conspiracy in Ireland, but had escaped punishment — 
came to England, and acted as a spy for the Cabal, who did 
not hesitate to countenance this daring scoundrel. 

His first exploit was to attack the Duke of Ormond's coach 
one night in St. James's Street : to secure his person, bind him, 
put him on horseback after one of his accomplices, and carry 
him to Tyburn, where he meant to hang his grace. On their 
way, however, Ormond, by a violent effort, threw himself on 
the ground ; a scuffle ensued : the duke's servants came up, 
and after receiving the fire of Blood's pistols, the duke escaped. 
Lord Ossory, the Duke of Ormond's son, on going afterward 
to court, met Buckingham, and addressed him in these words : 

" My lord, I know well that you are at the bottom of this 
late attempt on my father ; but I give you warning, if he by 
any means comes to a violent end, I shall not be at a loss to 
know the author. I shall consider you as an assassin, and shall 
treat you as such ; and wherever I meet you I shall pistol you, 
though you stood behind the king's chair ; and I tell it you in 
his majesty's presence, that you may be sure I shall not fail of 
performance." 

Blood's next feat was to carry off from the Tower the crown 
jewels. He was overtaken and arrested ; and was then asked 
to name his accomplices. " No," he replied, " the fear of dan- 
ger shall never tempt me to deny guilt or to betray a friend." 
Charles II., with undignified curiosity, wished to see the cul- 
prit. On inquiring of Blood how he dared to make so bold 
an attempt on the crown, the bravo answered, " My father lost 
a good estate fighting for the crown, and I considered it no harm 
to recover it by the crown." He then told his majesty how 
he had resolved to assassinate him ; how he had stood among 
the reeds in Battersea-fields with this design ; how then a sud- 
den awe had come over him : and Charles was weak enough 
to admire Blood's fearless bearing, and to pardon his attempt. 
Well might the Earl of Rochester write of Charles — 

" Here lies my sovereign lord the king, 
Whose word no man relies on ; 
Who never said a foolish thing, 
And never did a wise one." 

Notwithstanding Blood's outrages — the slightest penalty for 
which in our days would have been penal servitude for life — 
Evelyn met him, not long afterward, at Lord Clifford's, at 
dinner, when De Grammont and other French noblemen were 



40 WALLINGFORD HOUSE AND HAM HOUSE. 

entertained. " The man," says Evelyn, " had not only a dar- 
ing, but a villainous unmerciful look, a false countenance ; but 
very well-spoken, and dangerously insinuating." 

Early in 1662, the Duke of Buckingham had been engaged 
in practices against the court : he had disguised deep designs 
by affecting the mere man of pleasure. Never was there such 
splendor as at Wallingford House — such wit and gallantry ; 
such perfect good-breeding; such apparently open-handed 
hospitality. At those splendid banquets, John Wilmot, Earl 
of Rochester, " a man whom the muses were fond to inspire, 
but ashamed to avow," showed his " beautiful face," as it was 
called ; and chimed in with that wit for which the age was fa- 
mous. The frequenters at Wallingford House gloried in their 
indelicacy. " One is amazed," Horace Walpole observes, " at 
hearing the age of Charles II. called polite." The Puritans 
have affected to call every thing by a Scripture name ; the new- 
comers affected to call every thing by its right name ; 
"As if preposterously they would confess 
A forced hypocrisy in wickedness." 

Walpole compares the age of Charles II. to that of Aristoph- 
anes — "which called its own grossness polite." How bitter- 
ly he decries the stale poems of the time as "a heap of sense- 
less ribaldry ;" how truly he shows that licentiousness weakens 
as well as depraves the judgment. " When Satyrs are brought 
to court," he observes, " no wonder the Graces would not trust 
themselves there." 

The Cabal is said, however, to have been concocted, not at 
Wallingford House, but at Ham House, near Kingston-on- 
Thames. 

In this stately old manor-house, the abode of the Tollemache 
family, the memory of Charles II. and of his court seems to 
linger still. Ham House was intended for the residence of 
Henry, Prince of Wales, and was built in 1610. It stands near 
the river Thames ; and is flanked by noble avenues of elm and 
of chestnut trees, down which one may almost, as it were, hear 
the king's talk with his courtiers ; see Arlington approach with 
the well-known patch across his nose ; or spy out the lovely, 
childish Miss Stuart and her future husband, the Duke of Rich- 
mond, slipping behind into the garden, lest the jealous, morti- 
fied king should catch a sight of the " conscious lovers." 

This stately structure was given by Charles II., in 1672, to 
the Duke and Duchess of Lauderdale: she, the supposed mis- 
tress of Cromwell; he, the cruel, hateful Lauderdale of the Ca- 
bal. This detestable couple, however, furnished with massive 
grandeur the apartments of Ham House. They had the ceil- 
ings painted by Verrio ; the furniture was rich, and even the 



"MADAME ELLEN." 41 

bellows and brushes in some of the rooms are of silver filigree. 
One room is furnished with yellow damask, still rich, though 
faded ; the very seats on which Charles, looking around him, 
saw Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley (the infamous 
Shaftesbury), and Lauderdale — and knew not, good easy man, 
that he was looking on a band of traitors — are still there. Nay, 
he even sat to Sir Peter Lely for a portrait for this very place 
— in which schemes for the ruin of the kingdom were concoct- 
ed. All, probably, was smooth and pleasing to the monarch as 
he ranged down the fine gallery, ninety-two feet long ; or sat 
at dinner amid his foes in that hall, surrounded with an open 
gallery; or disported himself on the river's green brink. Nay, 
one may even fancy Nell Gwynn taking a day's pleasure in this 
then lone and ever sweet locality. We hear her swearing, as 
she was wont to do, perchance at the dim looking-glasses, her 
own house in Pall Mall, given her by the king, having been 
filled up for the comedian, entirely, ceiling and all, with look- 
ing-glass. How bold and pretty she looked in her undress, 
even Pepys — no very sound moralist, though a vast hypocrite 
— tells us : Nelly, " all unready" was " very pretty, prettier far 
than he thought." But to see how she was "painted," would, 
he thought, " make a man mad." 

"Madame Ellen," as after her elevation, as it was termed, 
she was called, might, since she held long a great sway over 
Charles's fancy, be suffered to scamper about Ham House — 
where her merry laugh perhaps scandalized the now saintly 
Duchess of Lauderdale, just to impose on the world ; for Nell 
was regarded as the Protestant champion of the court, in op- 
position to her French rival, the Duchess of Portsmouth. 

Let us suppose that she has been at Ham House, and is gone 
off to Pall Mall again, where she can see her painted face in ev- 
ery turn. The king has departed, and Killigrew, who, at all 
events, is loyal, and the true-hearted Duke of Richmond, all are 
away to London. In yon sanctimonious-looking closet, next to 
the duchess's bedchamber, with her psalter and her prayer-book 
on her desk, which is fixed to her great chair, and that very 
cane which still hangs there serving as her support from that 
closet, murmur and wrangle the component parts of that which 
was never mentioned without fear — the Cabal. They dare not 
trust themselves in the gallery; there is tapestry there, and we 
all know what coverts there are for eaves-droppers and spiders 
in tapestried walls ; then the great cardinal spiders do so click 
there, are so like the death-watch, that Villiers, who is invet- 
erately superstitious, wall not abide there. The hall, with its 
inclosing galleries, and the buttery near, are manifestly unsafe. 
So they herd, nay, crouch, mutter, and concoct that fearful 



42 VILLIEES AGAIN IN THE TOAVER. 

treachery which, as far as their country is concerned, has been 
a thing apart in our annals. Englishmen are turbulent, ambi- 
tious, unscrupulous ; but the craft of Maitland, Duke of Lau- 
derdale — the subtlety of Ashley, seem hardly conceivable ei- 
ther in a Scot or a Southern. 

These meetings had their natural consequence. One leaves 
Lauderdale, Arlington, Ashley, and Clifford, to their fate. But 
the career of Villiers inspires more interest. He seemed born 
for better things. Like many men of genius, he was so cred- 
ulous that the faith he pinned on one Heydon, an astrologer, 
at this time, perhaps buoyed him up with false hopes. Be it 
as it may, his plots now tended to open insurrection. In 1666 
a proclamation had been issued for his apprehension — he hav- 
ing then absconded. On this occasion he was saved by the act 
of one whom he had injured grossly — his wife. She managed 
to outride the sergeant-at-arms, and to warn him of his danger. 
She had borne his infidelities, after the fashion of the day, as 
a matter of course : jealousy was then an impertinence — con- 
stancy, a chimera; and her husband, whatever his conduct, had 
ever treated her with kindness of manner: he had that charm, 
that attribute of his family, in perfection, and it had fascinated. 
Mary Fairfax. 

He fled, and played for a year successfully the pranks of his 
youth. At last, worn out, he talked of giving himself up to 
justice. "Mr. Fenn, at the table, says that he hath been 
taken by the watch two or three times of late, at unseasonable 
hours, but so disguised they did not know him ; and when I 
come home, by and by, Mr. Lowther tells me that the Duke 
of Buckingham do dine publickly this day at Wadlow's, at the 
Sun Tavern ; and is mighty merry, and sent word to the Lieu- 
tenant of the Tower, that he would come to him as soon as he 
had dined." 

While in the Tower — to which he was again committed — 
Buckingham's pardon was solicited by Lady Castlemaine ; on 
which account the king was very angry with her ; called her 
a meddling "jade ;" she calling him " fool," and saying if he 
was not a fool he never would suffer his best subjects to be 
imprisoned — referring to Buckingham. And not only did she 
ask his liberty, but the restitution of his places. No wonder 
there was discontent when such things were done, and public 
affairs were in such a state. We must again quote the graph- 
ic, terse language of Pepys : — " It was computed that the Par- 
liament had given the king for this war only, besides all prizes, 
and besides the £200,000 which he was to spend of his own rev- 
enue, to guard the sea, above £5,000,000, and odd £100,000 ; 
which is a most prodigious sum. Sir H. Cholmly, as a true 



A CHANGE. 43 

English gentleman, do decry the king's expenses of his privy 
jurse, which in King James's time did not rise to above £5000 
i year, and in King Charles's to £10,000, do now cost us above 
6100,000, besides the great charge of the monarchy, as the 
)uke of York has £100,000 of it, and other limbs of the royal 
amily." 

In consequence of Lady Castlemaine's intervention, Villiers 
vas restored to liberty — a strange instance, as Pepys remarks, 
)f the "fool's play" of the age. Buckingham was now as 
resuming as ever : he had a theatre of his own, and he soon 
bowed his usual arrogance by beating Henry Killigrew on 
he stage, and taking away his coat and sword ; all very "in- 
locently" done, according to Pepys. In July he appeared in 
ds place in the House of Lords, as " brisk as ever," and sat 
n his robes, "which," says Pejjys, "is a monstrous thing that 
t man should be proclaimed against, and put in the Tower, 
md released without any trial, and yet not restored to his 
)laces." 

We next find the duke intrusted with a mission to France, 
q concert with Lords Halifax and Arlington. In the year 
680, he was threatened with an impeachment, in which, with 
us usual skill, he managed to exculpate himself by blaming 
jord Arlington. The House of Commons passed a vote for 
ds removal; and he entered the ranks of the opposition. 

But this career of public meanness and private profligacy 
ras drawing to a close. Alcibiades no longer — his frame 
pasted by vice — his spirits broken by pecuniary difficulties — 
Buckingham's importance visibly sank away. " He remained, 
,t last," to borrow the words of Hume, " as incapable of do- 
Qg hurt as he had ever been little desirous of doing good to 
nankind." His fortune had now dwindled down to £300 a 
ear in laud ; he sold "Wallingford House, and removed into 
he City. 

And now the fruits of his adversity, not, we hope too late, 
iegan to appear. Like Lord Rochester, who had ordered all 
is immoral works to be burnt, Buckingham now wished to 
etrieve the past. In 1685 he wrote the religious works which 
Drm so striking a contrast -with his other productions. 

That he had been up to the very time of his ruin perfectly 
npervious to remorse, dead also to shame, is amply mani- 
jsted by his conduct soon after his duel with the Earl of 
hrewsbury. 

Sir George Etherege had brought out a new play at the 
)uke of York's Theatre. It was called, " She Would if she 
/ould." Plays in those days began at what we now consider 
ur luncheon hour. Though Pepys arrived at the theatre at 



44 THE duke or yokk's theatre. 

two o'clock — his wife having gone before — about a thousand 
people had been put back from the pit. At last, seeing his 
wife in the eighteen-penny-box, he " made shift" to get there, 
and there saw, "but lord!" (his own words are inimitable) 
" how dull, and how silly the play, there being nothing in the 
world good in it, and few people pleased in it. The king was 
there ; but I sat mightily behind and could see but little, and 
hear not at all. The play being done, I into the pit to look for 
my wife, it being dark and raining, but could not find her ; 
and so staid going between the two doors and through the pit 
an hour and half, I think, after the play was done ; the people 
staying there till the rain was over, and to talk to one anoth- 
er. And among the rest, here was the Duke of Buckingham 
to-day openly in the pit ; and there I found him with my Lord 
Buckhurst, and Sedley, and Etheridge the poet, the last of 
whom I did hear mightily find fault with the actors, that they 
were out of humor, and had not their parts perfect, and that 
Harris did do nothing, nor could so much as sing a ketch in 
it; and so was mightily concerned, while all the rest did, 
through the whole pit, blame the play as a silly, dull thing, 
though there was something very roguish and witty ; but the 
design of the play, and end, might}- insipid." 

Buckingham had held out to his Puritan friends the hope of 
his conversion for some years ; and when they attempted to 
convert him, he had appointed a time for them to finish their 
work. They kept their promise, and found him in the most 
profligate society. It Avas indeed impossible to know in what 
directions his fancies might take him, when we find him be- 
lieving in the predictions of a poor fellow, in a wretched lodg- 
ing, near Tower Hill, who, having cast his nativity, assured 
the duke he Avould be king. 

He had continued for years to live Avith the Countess of 
Shrewsbury, and two months after her husband's death, had 
taken her to his home. Then, at last, the Duchess of Buck- 
ingham indignantly observed, that she and the countess could 
not possibly live together. " So I thought, madam," Avas the 
reply. " I haA*e therefore ordered your coach to take you to 
your father's." It has been asserted that Dr. Sprat, the duke's 
chaplain, actually married him to Lady Shrewsbury, and that 
his legal Avife thenceforth was styled " The Duchess-doAvager." 

He retreated with his mistress to Claverdon, near Windsor, 
situated on the summit of a hill which is washed by the Thames. 
It is a noble building, with a great terrace in front, under Avhich 
are twenty-six niches, in which Buckingham had intended to 
place twenty-six statues as large as life ; and in the middle is 
an alcove, with stairs. Here he lived with the infamous count- 



BUCKINGHAM AND THE PRINCESS OF ORANGE. 45 

ss, by whom he had a son, whom he styled Earl of Coventry 
bis second title), and who died an infant. 

One lingers still over the social career of one whom Louis 
[IV. called " the only English gentleman he had ever seen." 
k. capital retort was made to Buckingham by the Princess of 
) range, during an interview, when he stopped at the Hague, 
etween her and the Duke. He was ti'ying diplomatically to 
onvince her of the affection of England for the States. " We 
o not," he said, "use Holland like a mistress, we love her as 
wife." " Vraimentje crois que vous nous aimez comme votes 
imez la vbtre" was the sharp and clever answer. 
On the death of Charles II., in 1C85, Buckingham retired to 
be small remnant of his Yorkshire estates. His debts were 
ow set down at the sum of £140,000. They were liquidated 
y the sale of his estates. He took kindly to a country life, to 
be surprise of his old comrade in pleasure, Etherege. " I 
ave heard the news," that wit cried, alluding to this change, 
with no less astonishment than if I had been told that the 
'ope had begun to wear a periwig and had turned beau in the 
eventy-fourth year of his age!" 

Eat her Petre and Father Fitzgerald were sent by James II. 
d convert the duke to Popery. The following anecdote is 
)ld of their conference with the dying sinner : " We deny," 
aid the Jesuit Petre, " that any one can be saved out of our 
Ihurch. Your grace allows that our people may be saved." 
No, curse ye," said the duke, "I make no doubt you will all 
e damned to a man !" " Sir," said the fither, " I can not 
rgue with a person so void of all charity." " I did not ex- 
ect, my reverend father," said the duke, " such a reproach 
•om you, whose whole reasoning was founded on the very 
ame instance of want of charity to yourself." 

Buckingham's death took place at Helmsby, in Yorkshire, 
nd the immediate cause was an ague and fever, owing to hav- 
ig sat down on the wet grass after fox-hunting. Pope has 
iven the following forcible, but inaccurate, account of his last 
ours, and the place in which they were passed : 

' ' In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half hung, 

The floors of plaster and the walls of clung, 

On once a flock-bed, but repaired with straw, 

With tape-tied curtains never meant to draw ; 

The George and Garter dangling from that bed, 

Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red, 

Great Villiers lies : alas ! how changed from him, 

That life of pleasure and that soul of whim ! 

Gallant and gay, in Claverdon's proud alcove, 

The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love ; 

Or, just as gay, at council in a ring 

Of mimie'd statesmen and their merry King. 



46 Buckingham's last hours. 

No wit to flatter left of all his store, 
No fool to laugh at, which he valued more 
Then victor of his health, of fortune, friends, 
And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends." 

Far from expiring in the " worst inn's worst room," the duke 
breathed his last in Kirby Moorside, in a house which had 
once been the best in the place. Brian Fairfax, who loved 
this brilliant reprobate, has left the only authentic account on 
record of his last hours. 

The night previous to the duke's death, Fairfax had re- 
ceived a message from him desiring him to prepare a bed for 
him in his house, Bishop Hill, in York. The next day, how- 
ever, Fairfax was sent for to his master, whom he found dy- 
ing. He was speechless, but gave the afflicted servant an 
earnest look of recognition. 

The Earl of Arran, son of the Duke of Hamilton, and a 
gentleman of the neighborhood, stood by his bedside. He 
had then received the Holy Communion from a neighboring 
clergyman of the Established Church. When the minister 
came, it is said that he inquired of the duke what religion he 
professed. " It is," replied the dying man, " an insignificant 
question, for I have been a shame and a disgrace to all relig- 
ions : if you can do me any good, pray do." When a Popish 
priest had been mentioned to him, he answered vehemently, 
" No, no !" 

He was in a very low state when Lord Arran had found 
him. But though that nobleman saw death in his looks, the 
duke said he " felt so well at heart that he knew he could be 
in no danger." 

He appeared to have had inflammation in the bowels, which 
ended in mortification. He begged of Lord Arran to stay 
with him. The house seems to have been in a most miserable 
condition, for in a letter from Lord Arran to Dr. Sprat, he 
says : " I confess it made my heart bleed to see the Duke of 
Buckingham in so pitiful a place, and so bad a condition, and 
what made it worse, he was not at all sensible of it, for he 
thought in a day or two he should be well ; and when we re- 
minded him of his condition, he said it was not as we appre- 
hended. So I sent for a worthy gentleman, Mr. Gibson, to be 
assistant to me in this work; so we jointly represented his 
condition to him, who I saw was at first very uneasy ; but I 
think we should not have discharged the duties of honest men 
if we had suffered him to go out of this world without desir- 
ing him to prepare for death." The duke joined heartily in 
the beautiful prayers for the dying, of our church, and yet there 
was a sort of selfishness and indifference to others manifest 
even at the last. 



DEATH OF VILLIERS. 47 

" Mr. Gibson," writes Lord Arran, " asked him if he had 
ade a will, or if he would declare who was to be his heir ? 
it to the first, he answered he had made none ; and to the 
3t, whoever was named he answered, ' No.' First, my lady 
ichess was named, and then I think almost every body that 
,d any relation to him, but his answer always was, ' No.' I 
cl fully represent my lady duchess' condition to him, but 
thing that was said to him could make him come to any 
int." 

In this " retired corner," as Lord Arran terras it, did the 
rmer wit and beau, the once brave and fine cavalier, the 
skless plotter in after-life, end his existence. His body was 
moved to Helmsby Castle, there to wait the duchess' pleas- 
e, being meantime embalmed. Not one farthing could his 
rvvard produce to defray his burial. His George and blue 
)bon were sent to King James, with an account of his death. 
In Kirby Moorside, the following entry in the register of 
rials records the event, which is so replete with a singular 
trjbutive justice — so constituted to impress and sadden the 
nd : — 

" George Villus, Lord dooke of bookingham." 

He left scarcely a friend to mourn his life ; for. to no man 
d he been true. He died on the 16th of April according to 
me accounts ; according to others, on the third of that month, 
87, in the sixty-first year of his age. His body, after em- 
lming, was deposited in the family vault in Henry VII.'s 
apel.* He left no children, and his title was therefore ex- 
ict. The Duchess of Buckingham, of whom Brian Fairfax 
marks, " that if she had none of the vanities, she had none 
the vices of the court," survived him several years. She 
id in 1705, at the age of sixty-six, and was buried in the 
ult of the Villiers family, in the chapel of Henry VII. 
Such was the extinction of all the magnificence and intel- 
itual ascendency that at one time centred in this great and 
"ted family. 

' Brian Fairfax states, that at his death (the Duke of Buckingham's) he 
irged his debts on his estate, leaving much more than enough to cover 
m. By the register of Westminster Abbey, it appears that he was buried 
Henry VII.'s Chapel, 7th June, 1687. 



COUNT DE GRAMMONT, ST, EVREMOND, AND LORD 
ROCHESTER. 

It lias been observed by a French critic, that the Memo-ires 
de Gramtnont afford the truest specimens of French character 
in our language. To this it may be added, that the subject of 
that animated narrative was most completely French in prin- 
ciple, in intelligence, in wit that hesitated at nothing, in spir- 
its that were never daunted, and in that incessant activity 
which is characteristic of his countrymen. Grammont, it was 
said, " slept neither night nor day ;" his life was one scene of 
incessant excitement. 

His father, supposed to have been the natural sou of Henry 
the Great, of France, did not suppress that fact, but desired to 
publish it ; for the morals of his time were so depraved, that it 
was thought to be more honorable to be the illegitimate son 
of a king that the lawful child of lowlier parents. Born in 
the Castle of Semeae, on the banks of the Garonne, the fame of 
two fair ancestresses, Corisande and Menadame, had entitled 
the family of De Grammont to expect in each successive mem- 
ber an inheritance of beauty. Wit, courage, good-nature, a 
charming address, and boundless assurance, were the heritage 
of Philibert de Grammont. Beauty was not his possession : 
good-nature, a more popular quality, he had in abundance : 

"His wit to scandal never stooping, 
His mirth .ne'er to buffoonery drooping." 

As Philibert grew up, the two aristocratic professions of 
France were presented for his choice : the army or the church. 
Neither of these vocations constitutes now the ambition of the 
high-born in France : the church, to a certain extent, retains 
its prestige, but the army, ever since officers have risen from 
the ranks, does not comprise the same class of men as in En- 
gland. In the reign of Louis XIII. , when De Grammont lived, 
it was otherwise. All political power was vested in the church. 
Richelieu was, to all purposes, the ruler of France, the dictator 
of Europe; and, with regard to the church, great men, at the 
head of military affairs, were daily proving to the world how 
much intelligence could effect with a small numerical power. 
Young men took one course or another; the sway of the cabi- 
net, on the one hand, tempted them to the church ; the bril- 

C 



50 DE GBAMMONTS CHOICE. 

liant exploits of Turenne, and of Conde, on the other, led them 
to the camp. It was merely the difference of dress between 
the two that constituted the distinction : the soldier might be 
as pious as the priest, the priest was sure to be as worldly as 
the soldier ; the soldier might have ecclesiastical preferment ; 
the priest sometimes turned out to fight. 

Philibert de Grammont chose to be a soldier. He was 
styled the Chevalier de Grammont, according to custom, his 
father being still living. He fought under Turenne, at the 
siege of Trino. The army in which he served was beleaguer- 
ing that city when the gay youth from the banks of the Gar- 
onne joined it, to aid it not so much by his valor as by the fun, 
the railleiy, the off-hand anecdote, the ready, hearty compan- 
ionship which lightened the soldier's life in the trenches: 
adieu to impatience, to despair, even to gravity. The very 
generals could not maintain their seriousness when the light- 
hearted De Grammont uttered a repartee — 

" Sworn enemy to all long speeches, 
Lively and brilliant, frank and free, 
Author of many a repartee : 
Remember, over all, that he 
Was not renowned for storming breaches." 

Where he came, all was sunshine, yet there breathed not a 
colder, graver man than the Calvinist Turenne : modest, seri- 
ous, somewhat hard, he gave the young nobility who served 
under him no quarter in their shortcomings ; but a word, a 
look, from De Grammont could make him, malgre hot, itnbend. 
The gay chevalier's white charger's prancing, its gallant rider 
foremost in every peril, were not forgotten in after times, when 
De Grammont, in extreme old age, chatted over the achieve- 
ments and pleasures of his youth. 

Among those who courted his society in Turenne's ai-my 
was Matta, a soldier of simple maimers, hardy habits, and hand- 
some person, joined to a candid, honest nature. He soon pei*- 
suaded. De Grammont to share his quarters, and there they 
gave splendid entertainments, which, Frenchman-like, De Gram- 
mont paid for out of the successes of the gaming-tables. But 
chances were against them ; the two officers were at the mer- 
cy of their maitre d'hotel, who asked for money. One day, 
when De Grammont came home sooner than usual, he found 
Matta fast asleep. While De Grammont stood looking at him, 
he awoke, and burst into a violent fit of laughter. 

" What is the matter ?" cried the chevalier. 

" Faith, chevalier," answered Matta, " I was dreaming that 
we had sent away our maitre (Vhbtel, and were resolved to live 
like our neighbors for the rest of the campaign." 



THE CHURCH OR THE ARMY. 51 

" Poor fellow !" cried De Grammont. " So you are knocked 
down at once : what would have become of you if you bad been 
reduced to the situation I was in at Lyons, four days before I 
came here ? Come, I will tell you all about it." 

"Begin a little farther back," cried Matta, " and tell me about 
the manner in which you first paid your respects to Cardinal 
Richelieu. Lay aside your pranks as a child, your genealogy, 
and all your ancestors together ; you can not know any thing 
about them." 

" Well," replied De Grammont, " it was my father's own 
fault that he was not Henry IV.'s son : see what the Gram- 
monts have lost by this cross-grained fellow ! Faith, we might 
have walked before the Counts de Veudome at this very mo- 
ment." 

Then he went on to relate how he had been sent to Pan, to 
the college, to be brought up to the church, with an old serv- 
ant to act both as his valet and his guardian. How his head 
was too full of gaming to learn Latin. How they gave him 
his rank at college, as the youth of quality, when he did not 
deserve it ; how he traveled up to Paris to his brother to be 
polished, and went to court in the character of an abbe. "Ah, 
Matta, you know the kind of dress then in vogue. No, I 
would not change my dress, but I consented to draw over it a 
cassock. I had the finest head of hair in the world, well curl- 
ed and powdered above my cassock, and below were my white 
buskins and spurs." 

Even Richelieu, that hypocrite, he went on to relate, could 
not help laughing at the parti-colored costume, sacerdotal 
above, soldier-like below; but the cardinal Avas greatly offend- 
ed — not with the absence of decorum, but with the dangerous 
wit, that could laugh in public at the cowl and shaven crown, 
points which constituted the greatest portion of Richelieu's 
sanctity. 

De Grammont's brother, however, thus addressed the chev- 
alier : — " Well, my little parson," said he, as they went home, 
" you have acted your part to perfection ; but now you must 
choose your career. If you like to stick to the church, you 
will possess great revenues, and nothing to do ; if you choose 
to go into the army, you will risk your arm or your leg, but 
in time you may be a major general with a wooden leg and 
a glass eye, the spectacle of an indifferent, ungrateful court. 
Make your choice." 

The choice, Pliilibert went on to relate, was made. For the 
good of his soul, he renounced the church, but for his own ad- 
vantage, he kept his abbacy. This was not difficult in days' 
when secular abbes were common ; nothing would induce him 



52 A BKILLIANT IDEA. 

to change bis resolution of being a soldier. Meantime be was 
perfecting his accomplishments as a fine gentleman, one of the 
requisites for which was a knowledge of all sorts of games. 
No matter that his mother was miserable at his decision. Had 
her son been an abbe, she thought he would have become a 
saint : nevertheless, when he returned home, with the air of a 
courtier and a man of the world, boy as he was, and the very 
impersonation of what might then be termed lajeune France, 
she was so enchanted with him that she consented to his go- 
ing to the wars, attended again by Brinon, his valet, equerry, 
and mentor in one. Next in De Grammont's narrative came 
his adventure at Lyons, where he spent the 200 louis his moth- 
er had given Brinon for him, in play, and very nearly broke 
the poor old servant's heart; where he had duped a horse- 
dealer ; and he ended by proposing plans, similarly honorable, 
to be adopted for their present emergencies. 

The first step was to go to head-quarters, to dine with a 
certain Count de Cameran, a Savoyard, and invite him to sup- 
per. Here Matta interposed, "Are you mad?" he exclaim- 
ed. " Invite him to supper ! we have neither money nor 
credit ; we are ruined ; and to save us you intend to give a 
supper !" 

"Stupid fellow!" cried De Grammont. "Cameran plays 
at quinze : so do I : we want money. He has more than he 
knows what to do with : we give a supper, he pays for it. 
However," he added, " it is necessary to take certain precau- 
tions. You command the guards : when night comes on, or- 
der your Sergent-de-place to have fifteen or twenty men under 
arms, and let them lay themselves flat on the ground between 
this and head-quarters. Most likely we shall win this stupid 
fellow's money. Now the Piedmontese are suspicious, and he 
commands the horse. Now you know, Matta, you can not 
hold your tongue, and are very likely to let out some joke that 
will vex him. Supposing he takes it into his head that he is 
being cheated ? He has always eight or ten horsemen : we 
must be prepared." 

"Embrace me!" cried Matta, "embrace me! for thou art 
unparalleled. I thought you only meant to prepare a pack of 
cards and some false dice. But the idea of protecting a man 
who plays at quinze by a detachment of foot is excellent; 
thine own, dear chevalier !" 

Thus, like some of Dumas' heroes, hating villainy as a mat- 
ter of course, but being by no means ashamed to acknowledge 
it, the Piedmontese was asked to supper. Pie came. Never- 
theless, in the midst of the affair, when De Cameran was los- 
ing as fast as he could, Matta's conscience touched him : he 



DE GKAMMONT's GENEROSITY. 53 

awoke from a deep sleep, heard the dice shaking, saw the poor 
Savoyard losing, and advised him to play no more. 

" Don't you know, count, you can not win ?" 

"Why?" asked the count. 

" Why, faith, because we are cheating you," was the reply. 

The chevalier turned round impatiently, " Sieur Matta," he 
cried, " do you suppose it can he any amusement to Monsieur 
le Comte to be plagued with your ill-timed jests ? For my 
part, I am so weary of the game that I swear by Jupiter I can 
scarcely play any more." Nothing is more distasteful to a 
losing gamester than a hint of leaving off; so the count en- 
treated the chevalier to continue, and assured him that " Mon- 
sieur Matta might say what he pleased, for it did not give him 
the least uneasiness to continue." 

The chevalier allowed the count to play upon credit, and 
that act of courtesy was taken very kindly: the dupe lost 
1500 pistoles, which he paid the next morning, when Matta 
was sharply reprimanded for his interference. 

" Faith," he answered, " it was a point of conscience with 
me; besides it would have given me pleasure to have seen his 
horse engaged with my infantry, if he had taken any thing 
amiss." 

The sum thus gained set the spendthrifts up ; and De Gram- 
mont satisfied his conscience by giving it away, to a certain 
extent, in charity. It is singular to perceive in the history of 
this celebrated man that moral taint of character which the 
French have never lost : this total absence of right reasoning 
on all points of conduct, is coupled in our Gallic neighbors 
with the greatest natural benevolence, with a generosity only 
kept back by poverty, with impulsive, impressionable^ disposi- 
tions, that require the guidance of a sound Protestant faith to 
elevate and correct them. 

The chevalier hastened, it is related, to find out distressed 
comrades, officers who had lost their baggage, or who had 
been ruined by gaming ; or soldiers Avho had been disabled in 
the trenches ; and his manner of relieving them was as grace- 
ful and as delicate as the bounty he distributed was welcome. 
He was the darling of the array. The poor soldier knew him 
personally, and adored him ; the general was sure to meet him 
in the scenes of action, and to seek his company in those of 
security. 

And, having thus retrieved his finances, the gay-hearted 
chevalier used, henceforth, to make De Cameran go halves 
with him in all games in which the odds were in his own 
favor. Even the staid Calvinist, Turenne, who had not then 
renounced, as he did in after life, the Protestant faith, delight- 



54 A HORSE "FOR THE CARDS." 

ed in the off-hand merriment of the chevalier. It was toward 
the end of the siege of Trino, that De Grammont went to visit 
that general in some new quarters, where Turenne received 
him, surrounded by fifteen or twenty officers. According to 
the custom of the day, cards were introduced, and the general 
asked the chevalier to play. 

" Sir," returned the young soldier, " my tutor taught me 
that when a man goes to see his friends it is neither prudent 
to leave his own money behind him nor civil to take theirs." 

" Well," answered Turenne, " I can tell you you will find 
neither much money nor deep play among us ; but that it can 
not be said that Ave allowed you to go off without playing, 
suppose we each of us stake a horse." 

De Grammont agreed, and, lucky as ever, won from the 
officers some fifteen or sixteen horses, by way of a joke ; but 
seeing several faces pale, he said, " Gentlemen, I should be 
sorry to see you go away from your general's quarters on foot; 
it will do very well if you all send me to-morrow your horses, 
except one, which I give for the cards." 

The valet-de-chambre thought he was jesting. " I am seri- 
ous," cried the chevalier. " Parole d'honneur I give a horse 
for the cards ; and what's more, take which you please, only 
don't take mine." 

" Faith," said Turenne, pleased with the novelty of the af- 
fair, " I don't believe a horse was ever before given for the 
cards." 

Young people, and indeed old people, can perhaps hardly 
remember the time when, even in England, money used to be 
put under the candlesticks "for the cards," as it was said, but 
in fact for the servants, who waited. Winner or loser, the tax 
was to be paid, and this custom of vails was also prevalent in 
France. 

Trino at last surrendered, and the two friends rushed from 
their campaigning life to enjoy the gaveties of Turin, at that 
time the centre of pleasure ; and resolved to perfect their char- 
acters as military heroes — by falling in love, if respectably, 
well ; if disreputably, well too, perhaps all the more agreea- 
ble, and venturesome, as they thought. 

The court of Turin was then presided over by the Duchess 
of Savoy, Madame JRoyale, as she was called in France, the 
daughter of Henry IV. of France, the sister of Henrietta Ma- 
ria of England. She was a woman of talent and spirit, worthy 
of her descent, and had certain other qualities which constitu- 
ted a point of resemblance between her and her father ; she 
was, like him, more fascinating than respectable. 

The customs of Turin were rather Italian than French. At 



KNIGHT-CTCISBEISM. 55 

that time every lady had her professed lover, who wore the 
liveries of his mistress, bore her arms, and sometimes assumed 
her very name. The office of the lover was, never to quit his 
lady in public, and never to approach her in private : to be on 
all occasions her esquire. In the tournament her chosen knight- 
cicisbeo came forth with his coat, his housings, his very lance 
distinguished with the ciphers and colors of her who had con- 
descended to invest him with her preference. It was the rem- 
nant of chivalry that authorized this custom ; but of chivalry 
demoralized — chivalry denuded of her purity, her respect, the 
chivalry of corrupted Italy, not of that which, perhaps falla- 
ciously, we assign to the earlier ages. 

Grammont and Matta enlisted themselves at once in the 
service of two beauties. Grammont chose for the queen of 
beauty, who was to " rain influence" upon him, Mademoiselle 
de St. Germain, who was in the very bloom of youth. She 
was French, and, probably, an ancestress of that all-accom- 
plished Comte de St. Germain, whose exploits so dazzled suc- 
cessive European courts, and the fullest account of whom, in 
all its brilliant colors, yet tinged with mystery, is given in the 
Memoirs of Maria Antoinette, by the Marquise d'Adhemar, 
her lady of the bedchamber. 

The lovely object of De Grammont's "first love" was a 
radiant brunette belle, who took no pains to set off" by art the 
charms of nature. She had some defects : her black and spark- 
ling eyes were small ; her forehead, by no means " as pure as 
moonlight sleeping upon snow," was not fair, neither were her 
hands ; neither had she small feet — but her form generally was 
perfect ; her elbows had a peculiar elegance in them ; and in 
old times to hold the elbow out well, and yet not to stick it 
out, was a point of early discipline. Then her glossy black 
hair set off a superb neck and shoulders ; and, moreovei-, she 
was gay, full of mirth, life, complaisance, perfect in all the 
acts of politeness, and invariable in her gracious and graceful 
bearing. 

Matta admired her ; but De Grammont ordered him to at- 
tach himself to the Marquise de Senantes, a married beauty of 
the court ; and Matta, in full faith that all Grammont said and 
did was sure to succeed, obeyed his friend. The chevalier had 
fallen in love with Mademoiselle de St. Germain at first sight, 
and instantly arrayed himself in her color, which was green, 
while Matta wore blue, in compliment to the mai-quise ; and 
they entered the next day upon duty, at La Venerie, where 
the Duchess of Savoy gave a grand entertainment. De Gram- 
mont, with his native tact and unscrupulous mendacity, played 
his part to perfection ; but his comrade, Matta, committed a 



5(5 jjk grammont's witty attacks on mazarin. 

hundred solecisms. The very second time be honored the 
marquise with his attentions, he treated her as if she were his 
humble servant : when he pressed her hand, it was a pressure 
that almost made her scream. When he ought to have ridden 
by the side of her coach, he set off, on seeing a hare start from 
her form ; then he talked to her of partridges when he should 
have been laying himself at her feet. Both these affairs ended 
as might have been expected. Mademoiselle de St. Germain 
was diverted by Grammont, yet he could not touch her heart. 
Her aim was to marry ; his was merely to attach himself to a 
reigning beauty. They parted without regret ; and he left the 
then remote court of Turin for the gayer scenes of Paris and 
Versailles. Here he became as celebrated for his alertness in 
play as for his readiness in repartee ; as noted for his intrigues 
as he afterward was for his bravery. 

Those were stirring days in France. Anne of Austria, then 
in her maturity, was governed by Mazarin, the most artful of 
ministers, an Italian to the very heart's core, with a love of 
amassing wealth ingrafted in his supple nature that amounted 
to a monomania. The whole aim of his life was gain. Though 
gaming was at its height, Mazarin never played for amuse- 
ment ; he played to enrich himself; and when he played, he 
cheated. 

The Chevalier de Grammont was rich, and Mazarin wor- 
shiped the rich. Pie was witty ; and his wit soon procured 
him admission into the clique whom the wily Mazarin collected 
around him in Paris. Whatever were De Grammont's faults, 
he soon perceived those of Mazarin ; he detected, and he de- 
tested the wily, grasping, serpent-like attributes of the Italian; 
lie attacked him on every occasion on which a " wit combat" 
was possible ; he gracefully showed Mazarin off in his true col- 
ors. With ease he annihilated him, metaphorically, at his own 
table. Yet De Grammont had something to atone for : he had 
been the adherent and coinj)anion in arms of Conde ; he had 
followed that hero to Sens, to Nordlingen, to Fribourg, and 
had returned to his allegiance to the young king, Louis XIV., 
only because he wished to visit the court at Paris. Mazarin's 
policy, however, was that of pardon and peace — of duplicity 
and treachery — and the chevalier seemed to be forgiven on 
his return to Paris, even by Anne of Austria. Nevertheless, 
De Grammont never lost his independence ; and he could boast 
in after life that he owed the two great cardinals who had gov- 
erned France nothing that they could have refused. It Avas 
true that Richelieu had left him his abbacy ; but he could not 
refuse it to one of De Grammont's rank. From Mazarin he 
had gained nothing except what he had won at play. 



ANNE LUCIE DE LA MOTHE HOUDANCOUKT. 57 

After Mazarin's death the chevalier intended to secure the 
favor of the king, Louis XIV., to whom, as he rejoiced to find, 
court alone was now to be paid. He had now somewhat rec- 
tified his distinctions between right and wrong, and was re- 
solved to have no regard for favor unless supported by merit ; 
he determined to make himself beloved by the courtiers of 
Louis, and feared by the ministers ; to dare to undertake any 
thing to do good, and to engage in nothing at the expense of 
innocence. He still continued to be eminently successful in 
play, of which he did not perceive the evil, nor allow the 
wickedness ; but he was unfortunate in love, in which he was 
equally unscrupulous and more rash than at the gaming-table. 

Among the maids of honor of Anne of Austria was a young 
lady named Anne Lucie de la Mot he Houdancourt. Louis, 
though not long married, showed some symptoms of admira- 
tion for this debutante in the wicked ways of the court. 

Gay, radiant in the bloom of youth and innocence, the sto- 
ry of this young girl presents an instance of the unhappiness 
which, without guilt, the sins of others bring upon even the 
virtuous. The queen-dowager, Anne of Austria, Avas living at 
St. Germains when Mademoiselle de la Mothe Houdancourt 
was received into her household. The Duchess de Noailles, 
at that time Grande Maitresse, exercised a vigilant and kind- 
ly rule over the maids of honor ; nevertheless, she could not 
prevent their being liable to the attentions of Louis: she for- 
bade him however to loiter, or indeed even to be seen in the 
room appropriated to the young damsels under her charge; 
and when attracted by the beauty of Anne Lucie de la Mothe, 
Louis was obliged to speak to her through a hole behind a 
clock which stood in a corridor. 

Anne Lucie, notwithstanding this apparent encouragement 
of the king's addresses, was perfectly indifferent to his admi- 
ration. She Avas secretly attached to the Marquis de Riche- 
lieu, who had, or pretended to have, honorable intentions to- 
Avard her. Every thing Avas tried, but tried in vain, to induce 
the poor girl to give up all her predilections for the sake of a 
guilty distinction — that of being the king's mistress : even her 
mother reproached her with her coldness. A family council 
Avas held, in hopes of convincing her of her willfulness, and 
Anne Lucie Avas bitterly reproached by her female relatives; 
but her heart still clung to the faithless Marquis de Richelieu, 
Avho, however, Avhen he saAV that a royal lover Avas his rival, 
meanly withdrew. 

Her fall seemed inevitable; but the firmness of Anne of 
Austria saved her from her ruin. That queen insisted on her 
being sent away ; and she resisted even the entreaties of the 

C2 



58 BESET WITH SNARES. 

queen, her daughter-in-law, and the wife of Louis XIV. ; who, 
for some reason not explained, entreated that the young lady 
might remain at the court. Anne was sent away in a sort of 
disgrace to the convent of Chaillot, which was then consider- 
ed to be quite out of Paris, and sufficiently secluded to pro- 
tect her from visitors. According to another account, a let- 
ter full of reproaches, which she wrote to the Marquis de 
Richelieu, upbraiding him for his desertion, had been inter- 
cepted. 

It was to this young lady that De Grammont, who was 
then, in the very centre of the court, " the type of fashion 
and the mould 01 form," attached himself as an admirer 
who could condescend to honor with his attentions those 
whom the king pursued. The once gay girl was thus beset 
with snares : on one side was the king, whose disgusting pref- 
erence was shown when in her presence by sighs and senti- 
ment ; on the other, De Grammont, whose attentions to her 
were importunate, but failed to convince her that he was in 
love ; on the other was the time-serving, heartless De Riche- 
lieu, whom her reason condemned but her heart cherished. 
She soon showed her distrust and dislike of De Grammont : 
she treated him with contempt ; she threatened him with ex- 
posure, yet he would not desist : then she complained of him 
to the king. It was then that he perceived that though love 
could equalize conditions, it could not act in the same way be- 
tween rivals. He was commanded to leave the court. Par- 
is, therefore, Versailles, Fontainebleau, and St. Germains were 
closed against this gay chevalier ; and how could he live else- 
where ? Whither could he go ? Strange to say, he had a 
vast fancy to behold the man who, stained with the ci'ime of 
regicide, and sprung from the people, was receiving magnifi- 
cent embassies from continental nations, while Charles II. was 
seeking security in his exile from the power of Spain in the 
Low Countries. He was eager to see the Protector, Crom- 
well. But Cromwell, though in the height of his fame when 
beheld by De Grammont — though feared at home and abroad 
— was little calculated to win suffrages from a mere man of 
pleasure like De Grammont. The court, the city, the coun- 
try, were in his days gloomy, discontented, joyless : a pro- 
scribed nobility was the sure cause of the thin though few 
festivities of the now lugubrious gallery of Whitehall. Pu- 
ritanism drove the old jovial churchmen into retreat, and dis- 
pelled every lingering vestige of the old hospitality: long 
graces and long sermons, sanctimonious manners, and grim, 
sad faces, and sad -colored dresses, were not much to De 
Grammont's taste: he returned to France, and declared th.it 



CHARLES II. 59 

he had gained no advantage from his travels. Nevertheless, 
either from choice or necessity, he made another trial of the 
damps and fogs of England.* 

When he again visited our country, Charles II. had been 
two years seated on the throne of his father. Every thing 
Avas changed, and the British court was in its fullest splen- 
dor; while the rejoicings of the people of England at the Res- 
toration were still resounding through the land. 

If one could include royal personages in the rather gay than 
worthy category of the " wits and beaux of society," Charles 
II. should figure at their head. He was the most agreeable 
companion, and the worst king imaginable. In the first place 
he was, as it were, a citizen of the world ; tossed about by for- 
tune from his early boyhood ; a witness at the tender age of 
twelve of the battle of Edge Hill, where the celebrated Har- 
vey had charge of him and of his brother. That inauspicious 
commencement of a wandering life had perhaps been among 
the least of his early trials. The fiercest was his long resi- 
dence as a sort of royal prisoner in Scotland. A traveled, 
humbled man, he came back to England with a full knowl- 
edge of men and manners, in the prime of his life, with spirits 
unbroken by adversity, with a heart unsoured by that " stern 
nurse," with a gayety that was always kindly, never uncourt- 
eous, ever more French than English ; far more natural did he 
appear as the son of Henrietta Maria than as the offspring of 
the thoughtful Charles. 

In person, too, the king was then agreeable ; though rather 
what the French would call distingue than dignified ; he w r as, 
however, tall, and somewhat elegant, with a long French face, 
which in his boyhood w r as plump and full about the lower part 
of the cheeks, but now began to sink into that well-knowm, 
lean, dark, flexible countenance, in which we do not, howev- 
er, recognize the gayety of the man whose very name brings 
with it associations of wit, politeness, good company, and all 
the attributes of a first-rate wit, except the almost inevitable 
ill-nature. There is in the physiognomy of Chai'les II. that 
melancholy which is often observable in the faces of those 
who are mere men of pleasure. 

Do Grammont found himself completely in his own sphere 
at Whitehall, w T here the habits were far more French than 
English. Along that stately Mall, overshadowed with um- 
brageous trees, which retains — and it is to be hoped ever will 
retain — the old name of the "Birdcage Walk," one can pic- 
ture to one's self the king walking so fast that no one can 

* M. de Grammont visited England during the Protectorate. His second 
visit, after being forbidden the court by Louis XIV., was in 1662. 



GO THE COURT OF CHARLES II. 

keep up with him; yet stopping from time to time to chat 
with some acquaintances. He is walking to Duck Island, 
which is full of his favorite water-fowl, and of which he has 
given St. Evremond the government. How pleasant is his 
talk to those who attend him as he walks along; how well the 
quality of good-nature is shown in his love of dumb animals ; 
how completely he is a boy still, even in that brown wig of 
many cm-Is, and with the George and Garter on his breast! 
Boy, indeed, for he is followed by a litter of young spaniels : 
a little brindled greyhound frisks beside him ; it is for that he 
is ridiculed by the "psalm" sung at the Calves' Head Club : 
these favorites were cherished to his death. 

"His dogs would sit in council boards 
Like judges in their seats : 
We question much which had most sense, 
The master or the curs." 

Then what capital stories Charles would tell, as he unbent 
at night amid the faithful, though profligate companions of 
his exile! He told his anecdotes, it is true, over and over 
again, yet they were always embellished with some fresh 
touch — like the repetition of* a song which has been encored 
on the stage. Whether from his inimitable art, or from his 
royalty, we leave others to guess, but his stories bore repeti- 
tion again and again : they were amusing, and even novel, to 
the very last. 

To this seducing court did De Grammont now come. It 
was a delightful exchange from the endless ceremonies and 
punctilios of the region over which Louis XIV. presided. 
Wherever Charles was, his palace appeared to resemble a 
large hospitable house — sometimes town, sometimes country 
— in which every one did as he liked ; and where distinctions 
of rank were kept up as a matter of convenience, but were 
only valued on that score. 

Charles had modeled his court very much on the plan of 
that of Louis XIV., which he had admired for its gayety and 
spirit. Corneille, Racine, Moliere, Boileau, were encouraged 
by le Grand Monarque. Wycherley and Dryden were at- 
tracted by Charles to celebrate the festivities, and to amuse 
the great and the gay. In other points De Grammont found 
a resemblance. The queen -consort, Catherine of Braganza, 
was as complacent to her husband's vices as the queen of 
Louis. These royal ladies were merely first sultanas, and had 
no right, it was thought, to feel jealousy or to resent neglect. 
Each returning Sabbath saw Whitehall lighted up, and heard 
the tabors sound for a branle (Anglicized "brawl"). This 
was a dance which mixed up every body, and called a brawl, 



INTRODUCTION OF COUNTRY DANCES. 61 

from the foot being shaken to a quick time. Gayly did his 
Majesty perform it, leading to the hot exercise Anne Hyde, 
Duchess of York, stout and homely, and leaving Lady Castle- 
maine to his son the Duke of Monmouth. Then Charles, with 
ready grace, would begin the coranto, taking a single lady in 
this dance along the gallery. Lords and ladies one after an- 
other followed, and " very noble," writes Pepys, " and great 
pleasure it was to see." Next came the country dances, in- 
troduced by Mary, Countess of Buckingham, the grandmoth- 
er of the graceful duke who is moving along the gallery ; and 
she invented those once popular dances in order to introduce, 
with less chance of failure, her rustic country cousins, who 
could not easily be taught to carry themselves well in the 
brawl, or to step out gracefully in the coranto, both of which 
dances required practice and time. In all these dances the 
king shines the most, and dances much better than his broth- 
er the Duke of York. 

In these gay scenes De Grammont met with the most fash- 
ionable belles of the court : fortunately for him they all spoke 
French tolerably; and he quickly made himself welcome among 
even the few — and few indeed there were — who plumed them- 
selves iq^on untainted reputations. Hitherto those French no- 
blemen who had presented themselves in England had been 
poor and absurd. The court had been thronged with a troop 
of impertinent Parisian coxcombs, who had pretended to de- 
spise every thing English, and who treated the natives as if 
they were foreigners in their own country. De Grammont, 
on the contrary, was familiar with every one : he ate, he drank, 
he lived, in short, according to the custom of the country that 
hospitably received him, and accorded him the more respect, 
because they had been insulted by others. 

He now introduced the petits soupers, which have never 
been understood any where so well as in France, and which 
are even there dying out to make way for the less social and 
more expensive dinner; but, perhaps, he would even here have 
been unsuccessful, had it not been for the society and advice 
of the famous St. Evremond, who at this time was exiled in 
France and took refuge in England. 

This celebrated and accomplished man had some points of re- 
semblance with De Grammont. Like him, he had been origin- 
ally intended for the church ; like him he had turned to the mil- 
itary profession ; he was an ensign before he was full sixteen ; 
and had a company of foot given him after serving two or three 
campaigns. Like De Grammont, he owed the facilities of his 
early career to his being the descendant of an ancient and hon- 
orable family. St. Evremond was the Seigneur of St. Denis le 
Gnast, in Normandy, where he was horn, 



62 NORMAN PECULIARITIES. 

Both these sparkling wits of society had at one time, and, in 
fact, at the same period, served under the great Conde ; both 
were pre-eminent, not only in literature, but in games of chance. 
St. Evremond was famous at the University of Caen, in which 
he studied, for his fencing ; and " St. Evremond's pass" was 
well known to swordsmen of his time ; both were gay and sa- 
tirical ; neither of them pretended to rigid morals ; but both 
were accounted men of honor among their fellow-men of pleas- 
ure. They were graceful, kind, generous. 

In person St. Evremond had the advantage, being a Norman 
— a race which combines the handsomest traits of an English 
countenance with its blond hair, blue eyes, and fair skin. Nei- 
ther does the slight tinge of the Gallic race detract from the 
attractions of a true, well-born Norman, bred up in that prov- 
ince which is called the Court-end of France, and polished in 
the capital. Your Norman is hardy, and fond of field-sport's : 
like the Englishman, he is usually fearless ; generous, but some- 
what crafty. You may know him by the fresh color, the pe- 
culiar blue eye, long and large ; by his joyousness and look of 
health, gathered up even in his own marshy country, for the 
Norman is well fed, and lives on rich pasture-land, with cheap- 
ness and plenty around him. And St. Evremond was one of 
the handsomest specimens of this fine locality (so mixed up as 
it is with us) ; and his blue eyes sparkled with humor ; his 
beautifully-turned mouth was all sweetness ; and his noble 
forehead, the whiteness of which was set off by thick dark 
eyebrows, was expressive of his great intelligence, until a wen 
grew between his eyebrows, and so changed all the expression 
of his face that the Duchess of Mazarin used to call him the 
" Old Satyr." St. Evremond was also Norman in other re- 
spects : he called himself a thorough Roman Catholic, yet he 
despised the superstitions of his church, and prepared himself 
for death without them. When asked by an ecclesiastic sent 
expressly from the court of Florence to attend his death-bed, 
if he " would be reconciled," he answered, " With all my heart ; 
I would fain be reconciled to my stomach, which no longer 
performs its usual functions." And his talk, we are told, dur- 
ing the fortnight that preceded his death, was not regret for a 
life we should, in seriousness, call misspent, but because par- 
tridges and pheasants no longer suited his condition, and he 
was obliged to be reduced to boiled meats. No one, however, 
could tell what might also be passing in his heart. We can 
not always judge of a life, any more than of a drama, by its 
last scene; but this is -certain, that in an age of blasphemy St. 
Evremond could not endure to hear religion insulted by ridi- 
cule. " Common decency," said this man of the world, " and 



THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN EUJROPE. 63 

a due regard to our fellow-creatures, would not permit it." 
He did not, it seems, refer his displeasure to a higher source 
— to the jn-esence of the Omniscient — who claims from us all 
not alone the tribute of our poor trail hearts in serious mo- 
ments, but the deep reverence of every thought in the hours 
of careless pleasure. 

It was now St. Evremond who taught De Grammont to col- 
lect around him the wits of that court, so rich in attractions, 
so poor in honor and morality. The object of St. Evremond's 
devotion, though he had at the era of the Restoration passed 
his fiftieth year, was Hortense Mancini, once the richest heir- 
ess, and still the most beautiful Avoman in Europe, and a niece, 
on her mother's side, of Cardinal Mazarin's. Hortense had 
been educated, after the age of six, in France. She was Ital- 
ian in her accomplishments, in her reckless, wild disposition, 
opposed to that of the French, who are generally calculating 
and wary even in their vices : she was Italian in the style of 
her surpassing beauty, and French to the core in her princi- 
ples. Hortense, at the age of thirteen, had been married to 
Armand Due de Meilleraye and Mayenne, who had fallen so 
desperately in love with this beautiful child, that he declared 
" if he did not marry her he should die in three months." 
Cardinal Mazarin, although he had destined his niece Mary to 
this alliance, gave his consent on condition that the duke 
should take the name of Mazarin. The cardinal died a year 
after this marriage, leaving his niece Hortense the enormous 
fortune of £1,625,000 ; yet she died in the greatest difficulties, 
and her corpse was seized by her creditors. 

The Due de Mayenne proved to be a fanatic, who used to 
waken his wife in the dead of the night to hear his visions ; 
who forbade his child to be nursed on fast-days ; and who be- 
lieved himself to be inspired. After six years of wretchedness, 
poor Hortense petitioned for a separation and a division of 
property. She quitted her husband's home, and took refuge 
first in a nunnery, where she showed her unbelief or her irrev- 
erence, by mixing ink with holy water, that the poor nuns 
might black their faces when they crossed themselves ; or, in 
concert with Madame de Courcelles, another handsome mar- 
ried woman, she used to walk through the dormitories in the 
dead of night, with a number of little dogs barking at their 
heels ; then she filled two great chests that were over the dor- 
mitories with water, which ran over, and, penetrating through 
the chinks of the floor, wet the holy sisters in their beds. At 
length all this sorry gayety was stopped by a decree that Hor- 
tense was to return to the Palais Mazarin ; and to remain there 
until the suit for a separation should be decided. That the re- 



04 HORTENSE kANCINl'S ADVENTURES. 

suit should be favorable was doubtful : therefore, one fine night 
in June, 1667, Hortense escaped. She dressed herself in male 
attire, and, attended by a female servant, managed to get 
through the gate of Paris, and to enter a carriage. Then she 
fled to Switzerland ; and, had not her flight been shared by the 
Chevalier de Rohan, one of the handsomest men in France, 
one could hardly have blamed an escape from a half-lunatic 
husband. She was only twenty-eight when, after various ad- 
ventures, she came in all her unimpaired beauty to England. 
Charles was captivated by her charms, and, touched by her 
misfortunes, he settled on her a pension of £4000 a year, and 
gave her rooms in St. James's. Waller sang her praise : 

"When through the world fair Mazarine had run, 
Bright as her fellow- traveler, the sun: 
Hither at length the Roman eagle flies, 
As the last triumph of her conquering eyes." 

If Hortense failed to carry off from the Duchess of Ports- 
mouth — then the star of Whitehall — the heart of Charles, she 
found, at all events, in St. Evremond one of those French, pla- 
tonic, life-long friends, who, as Chateaubriand worshiped Mad- 
ame Recamier, adored to the last the exiled niece of Mazarin. 
Every day, when in her old age and his, the warmth of love 
had subsided into the serener affection of pitying, and yet ad- 
miring friendship, St. Evremond was seen, a little old man in a 
black coif, carried along Pall Mall in a sedan chair, to the 
apartment of Madame Mazarin, in St. James's. He always 
took with him a pound of butter, made in his own little dairy, 
for her breakfast. When De Grammont was installed at the 
court of Charles, Hortense was, however, in her prime. Her 
house at Chelsea, then a country village, was famed for its so- 
ciety and its varied pleasures. St. Evremond has so well de- 
scribed its attractions that his words should be literally given. 
" Freedom and discretion are equally to be found there. Ev- 
ery one is made more at home than in his own house, and 
treated with more respect than at court. It is true that there 
are frequent disputes there, but they are those of knowledge 
and not of anger. There is play there, but it is inconsidera- 
ble, and only practiced for its amusement. You discover in 
no countenance the fear of losing, nor concern for what is lost. 
Some are so disinterested that they are reproached for ex- 
pressing joy when they lose, and regret when they win. Play 
is followed by the most excellent repasts in the world. There 
you will find whatever delicacy is brought from France, and 
whatever is curious from the Indies. Even the commonest 
meats have the rarest relish imparted to them. There is nei- 
ther a plenty which gives a notion of extravagance, nor a fru- 
gality that discovers penury or meanness." 



ANECDOTE OF LORD DORSET. 05 

What an assemblage it must have been ! Here lolls Charles, 
Lord Buckhurst, afterward Lord Dorset, the laziest, in matters 
of business or court advancement — the boldest, in point of 
frolic and pleasure, of all the wits and beaux of his time. His 
youth had been full of adventure and of dissipation. " I know 
not how it is," said Wilmot, Lord Rochester, "but my Lord 
Dorset can do any thing, and is never to blame." He had, in 
truth, a heart ; he could bear to hear others praised ; he de- 
spised the arts of courtiers ; he befriended the unhappy ; he 
was the most engaging of men in manners, the most lovable 
and accomplished of human beings ; at once poet, philanthro- 
pist, and wit ; he was also possessed of chivalric notions, and 
of daring courage. 

Like his royal master, Lord Dorset had traveled ; and when 
made a gentleman of the bedchamber to Charles II., he was 
not unlike his sovereign in other traits ; so full of gayety, so 
high-bred, so lax, so courteous, so convivial, that no supper 
was complete without him ; no circle " the right thing," unless 
Buckhurst, as he was long called, was there to pass the bottle 
round, and to keep every one in good humor. Yet, he had 
misspent a youth in reckless immorality, and had even been in 
Newgate on a charge, a doubtful charge, it is true, of highway 
robbery and murder, but had been found guilty of manslaugh- 
ter only. He was again mixed up in a disgraceful affair with 
Sir Charles Sedley. When brought before Sir Robert Hyde, 
then Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, his name having 
been mentioned, the judge inquired whether that was the 
Buckhurst lately tried for robbery ? and when told it was, he 
asked him whether he had so soon forgotten his deliverance at 
that time : and whether it would not better become him to 
have been at his prayers begging God's forgiveness, than to 
come into such courses again ? 

The reproof took effect, and Buckhurst became what was 
then esteemed a steady man ; he volunteered and fought gal- 
lantly in the fleet, under James Duke of York; and he com- 
pleted his reform, to all outward show, by marrying Lady Fal- 
mouth.* Buckhurst, in society, the most good-tempered of 
men, was thus referred to by Prior, in his poetical epistle to 
Fleetwood Sheppard : 

"When crowding folks, with strange ill faces, 
Were making legs and begging places ; 

* The Earl of Dorset married Elizabeth, widow of Charles Berkeley, Earl 
of Falmouth, and daughter of Hervey Bagot, Esq., of Pipe Hall, Warwick- 
shire, who died without issue. He married, 7th March, 1684-5, Lady Mary 
Compton, daughter of James Earl of Northampton. 



66 LORD ROCHESTER IN HIS ZENITH. 

And some with patents, some with merit, 
Tired out my good Lord Dorset's spirit." 

Yet his pen was full of malice, while his heart was tender to 
all. Wilmot, Lord Rochester, cleverly said of him : — 

"For pointed satire I would Buckhurst ehuse, 
The best good man with the worst-natured muse." 

Still more celebrated as a beau and wit of his time, was 
John Wilmot, Lord Rochester. He was the son of Lord Wil- 
mot, the cavalier who so loyally attended Charles II. after the 
battle of Worcester ; and, as the offspring of that loyalist, was 
greeted by Lord Clarendon, then Chancellor of the University 
of Oxford, when he took his degree as Master of Arts, with a 
kiss.* The young nobleman then traveled, according to cus- 
tom ; and then most unhappily for himself and for others, 
whom he corrupted by his example, he presented himself at 
the court of Charles II. He was at this time a youth of eight- 
een, and one of the handsomest persons of his age. The face 
of Buckhurst was hard and plain; that of De Grammont had 
little to redeem it but its varying intelligence ; but the coun- 
tenance of the young Earl of Rochester was perfectly symmet- 
rical : it was of a long oval, with large, thoughtful, sleepy eyes ; 
the eyebrows arched and high above them ; the brow, though 
concealed by the curls of the now modest wig, was high and 
smooth ; the nose, delicately shaped, somewhat aquiline ; the 
mouth full, but perfectly beautiful, was set off by a round and 
well-formed chin. Such was Lord Rochester in his zenith ; 
and as he came forward on state occasions, his false light curls 
hanging down on his shoulders — a cambric kerchief loosely tied, 
so as to let the ends, worked in point, fall gracefully down; 
his scarlet gown in folds over a suit of light steel armor — for 
men had become carpet knights then, and the coat of mail 
worn by the brave cavaliers was now less warlike, and was 
mixed up with robes, ruffles, and rich hose — and when in this 
guise he appeared at Whitehall, all admired ; and Charles was 
enchanted with the simplicity, the intelligence, and modesty 
of one who was then an ingenuous youth, with good aspira- 
tions and a staid and decorous demeanor. 

Woe to Lady Rochester — woe to the mother who trusted 
her son's innocence in that vitiated court ! Lord Rochester 
forms one of the many instances we daily behold, that it is the 
inexperienced, the ignorant, who fall most deeply, as well as 
most early, into temptation. He soon lost every trace of vir- 
tue — of principle, even of deference to received notions of pro- 

* Lord Rochester succeeded to the Earldom in 1659. It was created by 
Charles II. in 1652, at Paris. 



HIS COURAGE AND WIT. G7 

priety. For a while there seemed hopes that he would not 
wholly fall : courage was his inheritance, and he distinguished 
himself in 16G5, when, as a volunteer, he went in quest of the 
Dutch East India Fleet, and served with heroic gallantry un- 
der Lord Sandwich. And when he returned to court, there 
was a partial improvement in his conduct. He even looked 
back upon his former indiscretions with horror : he had now 
shared in the realities of life : he had grasped a high and hon- 
orable ambition ; but he soon fell away — soon became almost 
a castaway. " For live years," he told Bishop Burnet, when 
on his death-bed, "I was never sober." His reputation as a 
wit must i*est, in the present day, chiefly upon productions 
which have long since been condemned as unreadable. Strange 
to say, when not under the influence of wine, he was a con- 
stant student of classical authors, perhaps the worst reading 
for a man of his tendencies : all that was satirical and impure 
attracting him most. Boileau, among French writers, and 
Cowley among the English, were his favorite authors. He 
also read many books of physic ; for long before thirty his 
constitution was so broken by his life, that he turned his at- 
tention to remedies, and to medical treatment ; and it is re- 
markable how many men of dissolute lives take up the same 
sort of reading, in the vain hope of repairing a course of disso- 
lute living. As a writei', his style was at once forcible and 
lively ; as a companion, he was wildly vivacious : madly, peril- 
ously, did he outrage decency, insult virtue, profane religion. 
Charles II. liked him on first acquaintance, for Rochester was 
a man of the most finished and fascinating manners ; but at 
length there came a coolness, and the witty courtier was ban- 
ished from Whitehall. Unhappily for himself he was recalled, 
and commanded to wait in London until his majesty should 
choose to readmit him into his presence. 

Disguises and practical jokes were the fashion of the day. 
The use of the mask, which was put down by proclamation 
soon after the accession of Queen Anne, favored a series of 
pranks with which Lord Rochester, during the period of his 
living concealed in London, diverted himself. The success of 
his scheme was perfect. He established himself, since he could 
not go to Whitehall, in the city. "His first design," De 
Grammont relates, " was only to be initiated into the myster- 
ies of those fortunate and happy inhabitants ; that is to say, by 
changing his name and dress, to gain admittance to their feasts 
and entertainments. ... As he was able to adapt himself to 
all capacities and humors, he soon deeply insinuated himself 
into the esteem of the substantial wealthy aldermen, and into 
the affections of their more delicate, magnificent, and tender 



68 CREDULITY, PAST AND PRESENT. 

ladies ; he made one in all then* feasts, and at all their assem- 
blies ; and while in the company of the husbands, he declaim- 
ed against the faults and mistakes of government ; he joined 
their wives in railing against the profligacy of the court ladies, 
and in inveighing against the king's mistresses : he agreed with 
them, that the industrious poor were to pay for these cursed 
extravagances; that the City beauties were not inferior to 
those at the other end of the town, . . . after which, to outdo 
their murmurings, he said, that he wondered "Whitehall was 
not yet consumed by fire from heaven, since such rakes as 
Rochester, Killigrew, and Sidney were suffered there." 

This conduct endeared him so much to the City, and made 
him so welcome at their clubs, that at last he grew sick of 
their cramming, and endless invitations. 

He now tried a new sphere of action ; and instead of return- 
ing, as he might have done, to the court, retreated into the 
most obscure corners of the metropolis ; and again changing 
his name and dress, gave himself out as a German doctor, 
named Bendo, who professed to find out inscrutable secrets, 
and to apply infallible remedies ; to know, by astrology, all 
the past, and to foretell the future. 

If the reign of Charles was justly deemed an age of high 
civilization, it was also one of extreme credulity. Unbelief in 
religion went hand in hand with blind faith in astrology and 
witchcraft ; in omens, divinations, and prophecies : neither let 
us too strongly despise, in these their foibles, our ancestors. 
They had many excuses for their superstitions ; and for their 
fears, false as their hopes, and equally groundless. The circu- 
lation of knowledge was limited : the public journals, that part 
of the press to which we now owe inexpressible gratitude for 
its general accuracy, its enlarged views, its purity, its informa- 
tion, was then a meagre statement of dry facts; an announce- 
ment, not a commentary. " The Flying Post," the " Daily 
Courant," the names of which may be supposed to imply 
speed, never reached lone country places till weeks after they 
had been printed on their one duodecimo sheet of thin coarse 
paper. Religion, too, just emerging into glorious light from 
the darkness of popery, had still Jier superstitions ; and the 
mantle that priestcraft had contrived to throw over her ex- 
quisite, radiant, and simple form, was not then wholly and 
finally withdrawn. Romanism still hovered in the form of 
credulity. 

But now, with shame be it spoken, in the full noonday 
genial splendor of our Reformed Church, with newspapers, 
the leading articles of which rise to a level with our greatest 
didactic writers, and are competent even to form the mind as 



" DR. BENDO AND LA BELLE JENNINGS. 69 

well as to amuse the leisure hours of the young readers: with 
every species of direct communication, we yet hold to fallacies 
from which the credulous in Charles's time would have shrunk 
in dismay and disgust. Table-turning, spirit-rapping, clairvoy- 
ance, Swedenborgianism, and all that family of follies, would 
have been far too strong for the faith of those who counted 
upon dreams as their guide, or looked up to the heavenly 
planets with a belief, partly superstitious, partly reverential, 
for their guidance ; and in a dim and flickering faith trusted 
to their stars. 

"Dr. Bendo," therefore, as Rochester was called — handsome, 
witty, unscrupulous, and perfectly acquainted with the then 
small circle of the court — was soon noted for his wonderful 
revelations. Chamber- Avomen, waiting-maids, and shop-girls 
were his first customers ; but, very soon, gay spinsters from 
the court came in their hoods and masks to ascertain, with 
anxious faces, their fortunes; while the cunning, sarcastic 
"Dr. Bendo," noted in his diary all the intrigues which were 
confided to him by these lovely clients. La Belle Jennings, 
the sister of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, was among his 
disciples ; she took with her the beautiful JVliss Price, and, dis- 
guising themselves as orange-girls, these young ladies set off 
in a hackney-coach to visit Dr. Bendo ; but, when within half 
a street of the supposed fortune-teller's, were prevented by the 
interruption of a dissolute courtier named Brounker. 

"Every thing by turns and nothing long." When Lord 
Rochester was tired of being an astrologer, he used to roam 
about the streets as a beggar : then he kept a footman who 
knew the Court well, and he used to dress him up in a red 
coat, supply him with a musket, like a sentinel, and send him 
to watch at the doors of all the fine ladies, to find out their 
goings on : afterward, Lord Rochester would retire to the 
country, and write libels on these fair victims, and, one day, 
offered to present the king with one of his lampoons; but, 
being tipsy, gave Charles, instead, one written upon himself. 

At this juncture we read with sorrow Bishop Burnet's forci- 
ble description of his career: 

"lie seems to have freed himself from all impressions of 
virtue or religion, of honor or good-nature. . . . He had but one 
maxim, to which he adhered firmly, that he has to do every 
thing, and deny himself in nothing that might maintain his 
greatness. He was unhappily made for drunkenness, for he 
had drunk all his friends dead, and was able to subdue two or 
three sets of drunkards one after another ; so it scarce ever 
appeared that he was disordered after the greatest drinking: 
an hour or two of sleep carried all off so entirely, that no sign 
of them remained. . . . This had a terrible conclusion." 



70 LA TRISTJE HERITIERE. 

Like many other men, Rochester might have been saved by 
being kept far from the scene of temptation. While he re- 
mained hi the country lie was tolerably sober, perhaps steady. 
When he approached Brentford on his route to London, his 
old propensities came upon him. 

When scarcely out of his boyhood he carried off a young 
heiress, Elizabeth Mallet, whom De Grammont calls La triste 
heritiere: and triste, indeed, she naturally was. Possessed of 
a fortune of £2500 a year, this young lady was marked out by 
Charles II. as a victim for the profligate Rochester. But the 
reckless young wit chose to take his own way of managing 
the matter. One night, after supping at Whitehall, with Miss 
Stuart, the young Elizabeth was returning home with her 
grandfather, Lord Haly, when their coach was suddenly stop- 
ped near Charing Cross by a number of bravos, both on horse- 
back and on foot — the "Roaring Boys and Mohawks," who 
were not extinct even in Addison's time. They lifted the af- 
frighted girl out of the carriage, and placed her in one which 
had six horses ; they then set off for Uxbridge, and were over- 
taken ; but the outrage ended in marriage, and Elizabeth be- 
came the unhappy, neglected Countess of Rochester. Yet she 
loved him — perhaps in ignorance of all that was going on 
while she staid with her four children at home. 

"If," she writes to him, "I could have been troubled at 
any thing, when I had the happiness of receiving a letter from 
you, I should be so, because you did not name a time when I 
might hope to see you, the uncertainty of which very much 
afflicts me. . . . Lay your commands upon me what I am to do, 
and though it be to forget my children, and the long hope I 
have lived in of seeing you, yet will I endeavor to obey you ; 
or in the memory only torment myself, without giving you the 
trouble of putting you in mind that there lives a creature as 

" Your faithful, humble servant." 

And he, in reply : " I went away (to Rochester) like a ras- 
cal, without taking leave, dear wife. It is an unpolished way 
of proceeding, Avhich a modest man ought to be ashamed of. 
I have left you a prey to your own imaginations among my 
relations, the worst of damnations. But there will come an 
hour of deliverance, till when, may my mother be merciful 
unto you! So I commit you to what I shall ensue, woman 
to woman, wife to mother, in hopes of a future appearance in 
glory. . . . 

" Pray write as often as you have leisure, to your 

" Rochester." 



RETRIBUTION AND REFORMATION. 11 

To his son, he writes : " You are now grown big enough to 
be a man, if you can be wise enough ; and the way to be truly 
wise is to serve God, learn your book, and observe the in- 
structions of your parents first, and next your tutor, to whom 
I have entirely resigned you for this seven years ; and accord- 
ing as you employ that time, you are to be happy or unhappy 
forever. I have so good an opinion of you, that I am glad to 
think you will never deceive me. Dear child, learn your book 
and be obedient, and you will see what a father I shall be to 
you. You shall want no pleasure while you are good, and 
that you may be good are my constant prayers." 

Lord Rochester had not attained the age of thirty, when he 
was mercifully awakened to a sense of his guilt here, his peril 
hereafter. It seemed to many that his very nature was so 
warped that penitence in its true sense could never come to 
him ; but the mercy of God is unfathomable ; He judges not 
as man judges ; He forgives, as man knows not how to forgive. 

" God, or kind Master, merciful as just, 
Knowing our frame, remembers man is dust : 
He marks the dawn of every virtuous aim, 
And fans the smoking flax into a flame ; 
He hears the language of a silent tear, 
And sighs are incense from a heart sincere." 

And the reformation of Rochester is a confirmation of the doc- 
trine of a special Providence, as well as of that of a retribution 
even in this life. 

The retribution came in the form of an early but certain de- 
cay ; of a suffering so stern, so composed of mental and bodily 
anguish, that never was man called to repentance by a voice 
so distinct as Rochester. The reformation was sent through 
the instrumentality of one who had been a sinner like him- 
self, who had sinned with him ; an unfortunate lady, who, in 
her last hours, had been visited, reclaimed, consoled, by Bish- 
op Burnet. Of this, Lord Rochester had heard. He was then, 
to all appearance, recovering from his last sickness. He sent 
for Burnet, who devoted to him one evening every week of 
that solemn winter when the soul of the penitent sought recon- 
ciliation and peace. 

The conversion was not instantaneous ; it was gradual, pene- 
trating, effective, sincere. Those who wish to gratify curiosi- 
ty concerning the death-bed of one who had so notoriously sin- 
ned, will read Burnet's account of Rochester's illness and death 
with deep interest ; and nothing is so interesting as a death- 
bed. Those who delight in works of nervous thought and 
elevated sentiments will read it too, and arise from the perusal 
gratified. Those, however, who are true, contrite Christians 



<2 ROCHESTER S EXHORTATION TO MR. FANSHAWE. 

will go still farther ; they will own that few works so intense- 
ly touch the holiest and highest feelings ; few so absorb the 
heart ; few so greatly show the vanity of life ; the unspeakable 
value of a purifying faith. " It is a book which the critic," 
says Dr. Johnson, " may read for its elegance, the philosopher 
for its arguments, the saint for its piety." 

While deeply lamenting his own sins, Lord Rochester be- 
came anxious to redeem his former associates from theirs. 

" When Wilmot, Earl of Rochester,"* writes William Thom- 
as, in a manuscript preserved in the British Museum, " lay on 
his death-bed, Mr. Fanshawe came to visit him, with an inten- 
tion to stay about a week with him. Mr. Fanshawe, sitting 
by the bedside, perceived his lordship praying to God, through 
Jesus Christ, and acquainted Dr. Radclifle, who attended my 
Lord Rochester in this illness and was then in the house, with 
what he had heard, and told him that my lord was certainly 
delirious, for to his knowledge, he said, he believed neither in 
God nor in Jesus Christ. The doctor, who had often heard 
him pray in the same manner, proposed to Mr. Fanshawe to go 
up to his lordship to be further satisfied touching this affair. 
When they came to his room, the doctor told my lord what 
Mr. Fanshawe said, upon which his lordship addressed himself 
to Mr. Fanshawe to this effect : ' Sir, it is true, you and I have 
been very bad and profane together, and then I was of the 
ojiinion you mention. But now I am quite of another mind, 
and happy am I that I am so. I am very sensible how miser- 
able I was while of another opinion. Sir, you may assure 
yourself that there is a Judge and a future state ;' and so en- 
tered into a very handsome discourse concerning the last judg- 
ment, future state, etc., and concluded with a sericms and pa- 
thetic exhortation to Mr. Fanshawe to enter into another 
course of life; adding that he (Mr. F.) knew him to be his 
friend ; that he never was more so than at this time ; and 
''sir,' said he, 'to use a Scripture expression, I am not mad, 
but speak the words of truth and soberness.' Upon this Mr. 
Fanshawe trembled, and went immediately afoot to Wood- 
stock, and there hired a horse to Oxford, and thence took 
coach to London." 

There were other butterflies in that gay court ; beaux with- 
out wit ; remorseless rakes, incapable of one noble thought or 
high pursuit ; and among the most foolish and fashionable of 
these was Henry Jermyn, Lord Dover. As the nephew of 
Henry Jermyn, Lord St. Albans, this young simpleton was 

* Mr. William Thomas, the writer of this statement, heard it from Dr. 
■Radcliffe, at the table of Speaker Harley (afterward Earl of Oxford), 16th 
June, 1 702. 



LITTLE JERMYN. AN INCOMPARABLE BEAUTY. 73 

ushered into a court life with the most favorable auspices. 
Jermyn Street (built in 1667) recalls to us the residence of 
Lord St. Albans, the supposed husband of Henrietta Maria. 
It was also the centre of fashion when Henry Jerrayn the 
younger was launched into its unholy sphere. Near Eagle 
Passage lived at that time La Belle Stuart, Duchess of Rich- 
mond; next door to her Henry Savile, Rochester's friend. 
The locality has since been purified by worthier associations : 
Sir Isaac Newton lived for a time in Jerrayn Street, and Gray 
lodged there. 

It was, however, in De Grammont's time, the scene of all 
the various gallantries which were going on. Henry Jermyn 
was supported by the wealth of his uncle, that uncle who, 
while Charles II. was starving at Brussels, had kept a lavish 
table in Paris : little Jermyn, as the younger Jermyn Avas call- 
ed, owed much indeed to his fortune, which had procured him 
great eclat at the Dutch court. His head was large ; his feat- 
ures small ; his legs short ; his physiognomy was not positive- 
ly disagreeable, but he was affected and trifling, and his wit 
consisted in expressions learned by rote, which supplied him 
either with raillery or with compliments. 

This petty, inferior being had attracted the regard of the 
Princess Royal — afterward Princess of Orange — the daughter 
of Charles I. Then the Countess of Castlemaine — afterward 
Duchess of Cleveland — became infatuated with him ; he capti- 
vated also the lovely Mrs. Hyde, a languishing beauty, whom 
Sir Peter Lely has depicted in all her sleepy attractions, with 
her ringlets filling lightly over her snowy forehead and down 
to her shoulders. This lady Avas, at the time when Jermyn 
came to England, recently married to the son of the great 
Clarendon. She fell desperately in love with this unworthy 
being ; but, happily for her peace, he preferred the honor (or 
dishonor) of being the favorite of Lady Castlemaine, and Mrs. 
Hyde escaped the disgrace she perhaps merited. 

De Grammont appears absolutely to have hated Jermyn; 
not because he was immoral, impertinent, and contemptible, 
but because it was Jermyn's boast that no woman, good or 
bad, could resist him. Yet, in respect to their unprincipled 
life, Jermyn and De Grammont had much in common. The 
count was at this time an admirer of the foolish beauty, Jane 
Middleton ; one of the loveliest women of a court where it 
was impossible to turn without seeing loveliness. 

Mrs. Middleton was the daughter of Sir Roger Needham ; 
and she has been described, even by the grave Evelyn, as a 
" famous, and, indeed, incomparable beauty." A coquette, she 
was, however, the friend of intellectual men ; and it was prob- 

D 



ANTHONY HAMILTON, HE GRAMMONT S BIOGRAPHER. 



ably at the house of St. Evremond that the count first saw her. 
Her figure was good ; she was fair and delicate ; and she had 
so great a desire, Count Hamilton relates, to " appear magnifi- 
cently, that she was ambitious to vie with those of the great- 
est fortunes, though unable to support the expense." 

Letters and presents now flew about. Perfumed gloves, 
pocket looking-glasses, elegant boxes, apricot paste, essences, 
and other small wares arrived weekly from Paris : English 
jewelry still had the preference, and was liberally bestowed ; 
yet Mrs. Middleton, affected and somewhat precise, accepted 
the gifts but did not seem to encourage the giver. 

The Count de Grammont, piqued, was beginning to turn 
his attention to Miss Warmestre, one of the queen's maids of 
honor, a lively brunette, and a contrast to the languid Mrs. 
Middleton, when, happily for him, a beauty appeared on the 
scene, and attracted him, by higher qualities than mere looks, 
to a real, fervent, and honorable attachment. 

Among the few respected families of that period was that of 
Sir George Hamilton, the fourth son of James, Earl of Aber- 
corn, and of Mary, granddaughter of Walter, eleventh Earl 
of Ormond. Sir George had distinguished himself during the 
civil wars : on the death of Charles I. he had retired to France, 
but returned, after the Restoration, to London, Avith a large 
family, all intelligent and beautiful. 

From their relationship to the Ormond family, the Hamil- 
tons were soon installed in the first circles of fashion. The 
Duke of Ormond' s sons had been in exile with the king ; they 
now added to the lustre of the court after his return. The 
Earl of Arran, the second, was a beau of the true Cavalier or- 
der ; clever at games, more especially at tennis, the king's fa- 
vorite diversion ; he touched the guitar well ; and made love 
ad libitum. Lord Ossory, his elder brother, had less vivacity 
but more intellect, and possessed a liberal, honest nature, and 
an heroic character. 

All the good qualities of these two young noblemen seem 
to have been united in Anthony Hamilton, of whom De Gram- 
mont gives the following character: — " The elder of the Ham- 
ilton s, their cousin, was the man who, of all the court, dressed 
best ; he was well made in his person, and possessed those hap- 
py talents which lead to fortune, and procure success in love : 
he was a most assiduous courtier, had the most lively wit, the 
most polished manners, and the most punctual attention to his 
master imaginable ; no person danced better, nor was any one 
a more general lover — a merit of some account in a court en- 
tirely devoted to love and gallantry. It is not at all surpris- 
ing that, with these qualities, he succeeded my Lord Falmouth 
in the kinsr's favor." 



THE THREE COURTS. 75 

The fascinating person thus described was born in Ireland : 
he had already experienced some vicissitudes, which were re- 
newed at the Revolution of 1688, when he fled to France — the 
country in which he had spent his youth — and died at St. Gei*- 
maius in 1720, aged seventy-four. His poetry and his fairy 
tales are forgotten ; but his " Memoirs of the Count de Gram- 
mont" is a work which combines the vivacity of a French writ- 
er with the truth of an English historian. 

Ormond Yard, St. James's Square, was the London resi- 
dence of the Duke of Ormond : the garden-wall of Ormond 
House took up the greater part of York Street : the Hamilton 
family had a commodious house in the same courtly neighbor- 
hood ; and the cousins mingled continually. Here persons of 
the greatest distinction constantly met ; and here the " Cheva- 
lier de Grammont," as he was still called, was received in a 
manner suitable to his rank and style ; and soon regretted that 
he had passed so much time in other places ; for, after he once 
knew the charming Hamiltons, he wished for no other friends. 

There were three courts at that time in the capital ; that at 
Whitehall, in the king's apartments ; that in the queen's, in the 
same palace ; and that of Henrietta Maria, the Queen Mother, 
as she was styled, at Somerset House. Charles's was pre-em- 
inent in immorality, and in the daily outrage of all decency; 
that of the unworthy widow of Charles I. was just bordering 
on impropriety ; that of Katherine of Braganza was still dec- 
orous, though not irreproachable. Pepys, in his Diary, has 
this passage : — " Visited Mrs. Ferrers, and stayed talking with 
her a good, while, there being a little, proud, ugly, talking lady 
there, that was much crying up the queene-mother's court at 
Somerset House, above our queen's; there being before her no 
allowance of laughing and mirth that is at the other's ; and, 
indeed, it is observed that the greatest court nowadays is 
there. Thence to Whitehall, Avhere I carried my wife to see 
the queene in her presence-chamber ; and the maydes of hon- 
our and the young Duke of Monmouth, playing at cards." 

Queen Katherine, notwithstanding that the first words she 
was ever known to say in English were " You lief" was one 
of the gentlest of beings. Pepys describes her as having a 
modest, innocent look, among all the demireps Avith whom she 
was forced to associate. Again we turn to Pepys, an anec- 
dote of whose is characteristic of ])oor Katherine's submissive, 
uncomplaining nature : 

" With Creed, to the King's Head ordinary ; . . . . and a 
pretty gentleman in our company, who confirms my Lady Cas- 
tlemaine's being gone from court, but knows not the reason ; 
he told us of one wipe the queene, a little while ago, did give 



7(5 LA BELLE HAMILTON. 

her, when she come in and found the queene under the dress- 
er's hands, and had been so long. 'I wonder your majesty,' 
says she, ' can have the patience to sit so long a-dressing ?' 
' I have so much reason to use patience,' says the queene, 
' that I can very well hear with it.' " 

It was in the court of this injured queen that Do Grammont 
went one evening to Mrs. Midclleton's house : there was a ball 
that night, and among the dancers was the loveliest creature 
that De Grammont had ever seen. His eyes were riveted on 
this fair form ; he had heard of, but never till then seen her 
whom all the world consented to call " La Belle Hamilton," 
and his heart instantly echoed the expression. From this time 
he forgot Mrs. Middleton, and despised Miss Warmestre : " he 
found," he said, that he " had seen nothing at court till this 
instant." 

" Miss Hamilton," he himself tells us, " was at the happy 
age when the charms of the fair sex begin to bloom ; she had 
the finest shape, the loveliest neck, and most beautiful arms 
in the world ; she was majestic and graceful in all her move- 
ments ; and she was the original after which all the ladies cop- 
ied in their taste and air of dress. Her forehead was open, 
white, and smooth ; her hair Avas well set, and fell with ease 
into that natural order which it is so difficult to imitate. Her 
complexion was possessed of a certain freshness, not to be 
equaled by borrowed colors ; her eyes were not large, but they 
were lively, and capable of expressing whatever she pleased."* 
So far for her person ; but De Grammont was, it seems, weary 
of mere external charms : it was the intellectual superiority 
that riveted his feelings, while his connoisseurship in beau- 
ty was satisfied that he had never yet seen any one so per- 
fect. 

" Her mind," he says, " was a proper companion for such a 
form : she did not endeavor to shine in conversation by those 
sprightly sallies which only puzzle, and with still greater care 
she avoided that affected solemnity in her discourses which 
produces stupidity; but, without any eagerness to talk, she 
just said what she ought, and no more. She had an admira- 
ble discernment in distinguishing between solid and false wit; 
and far from making an ostentatious display of her abilities, 
she was reserved, though very just in her decisions. Her sen- 
timents were always noble, and even lofty to the highest ex- 
tent, when there was occasion ; nevertheless, she was less pre- 
possessed with her own merit than is usually the case with 
those who have so much. Formed as we have described, she 
could not fail of commanding love ; but so far was she from 
* See De Grammont's Memoirs. 



HER PRACTICAL JOKES. <0 

courting it, that she was scrupulously nice with respect to 
those whose merit might entitle them to form any pretensions 
to her." 

Born in 1641, Elizabeth — for such was the Christian name 
of this lovely and admirable woman — was scarcely in her 
twentieth year when she first appeared at Whitehall. Sir 
Peter Lely was at that time painting the Beauties of the Court, 
and had done full justice to the intellectual and yet innocent 
face that riveted De Grammont. He had depicted her with 
her rich dark hair, of which a tendril or two fell on her ivory 
forehead, adorned at the back with large pearls, under which 
a gauze-like texture was gathered up, falling over the fair 
shoulders like a veil : a full corsage, bound by a light band 
either of ribbon or of gold lace, confining, with a large jewel or 
button, the sleeve on the shoulder, disguised somewhat the ex- 
quisite shape. A frill of fine cambric set off, while in white- 
ness it scarce rivaled, the shoulder and neck. 

The features of this exquisite face are accurately described 
by De Grammont, as Sir Peter has painted them. "The mouth 
does not smile, but seems ready to break out into a smile. 
Nothing is sleepy, but every thing is soft, sweet, and innocent 
in that face so beautiful and so beloved." 

While the colors were fresh on Lely's palettes, James Duke 
of York, that profligate who aped the saint, saw it, and hence- 
forth paid his court to the original, but was repelled with fear- 
less hauteur. The dissolute nobles of the court followed his 
example, even to the "lady-killer" Jermyn, but in vain. Un- 
happily for La Belle Hamilton, she became sensible to the at- 
tractions of.De Grammont, whom she eventually married. 

Miss Hamilton, intelligent as she was, lent herself to the 
fashion of the day, and delighted in practical jokes and tricks. 
At the splendid masquerade given by the queen she continued 
to plague her cousin, Lady Muskerry ; to confuse and expose, 
a stupid court beauty, a Miss Blaque ; and at the same time to 
produce on the Count de Grammont a still more powerful ef- 
fect than even her charms had done. Her success in hoaxing 
— which Ave should now think both perilous and indelicate — 
seems to have only riveted the chain, which was drawn around 
him more strongly. 

His friend, or rather his foe, St. Evremond, tried in vain to 
discourage the chevalier from his new passion. The former 
tutor was, it appeared, jealous of its influence, and hurt that 
De Grammont was now seldom at his house. 

De Grammont's answer to his remonstrances was very char- 
acteristic. " My poor philosopher," he cried, " you understand 
Latin well — you can make good verses — you are acquainted 



80 THE HOUSEHOLD DEITY OF WHITEHALL. 

with the nature of the stars in the firmament — but you are 
wholly ignorant of the luminaries in the terrestrial globe." 

lie then announced his intention to persevere, notwithstand- 
ing all the obstacles which attached to the suit of a man with- 
out either fortune or character, who had been exiled from his 
own country, and whose chief mode of livelihood was depend- 
ent on the gaming-table. 

One can scarcely read of the infatuation of La Belle Hamil- 
ton without a sigh. During a period of six years their mar- 
riage was in contemplation only ; and De Grammont seems to 
have trifled inexcusably with the feelings of this once gay and 
ever lovely girl. It was not for want of means that De Gram- 
mont thus delayed the fulfillment of his engagement. Charles 
II., inexcusably lavish, gave him a pension of 1500 Jacobuses: 
it was to be paid to him until he should be restored to the fa- 
vor of his own king. The fact was that De Grammont con- 
tributed to the pleasures of the court, and pleasure was the 
household deity of Whitehall. Sometimes, in those days of 
careless gayety, there were promenades in Spring Gardens, or 
the Mall ; sometimes the court beauties sallied forth on horse- 
back ; at other times there were shows on the river, which 
then washed the very foundations of Whitehall. There in the 
summer evenings, when it was too hot and dusty to walk, Old 
Thames might be seen covered with little boats, filled with 
court and city beauties, attending the royal barges ; collations, 
music, and fireworks completed the scene, and De Grammont 
always contrived some surprise — some gallant show : once a 
concert of vocal and instrumental music, which he had pri- 
vately brought from Paris, struck up unexpectedly : another 
time, a collation brought from the same gay capital surpassed 
that supplied by the king. Then the count, finding that coach- 
es with glass windows, lately introduced, displeased the ladies, 
because their charms were only partially seen in them, sent for 
the most elegant and superb caleche ever seen : it came after 
a month's journey, and was presented by De Grammont to 
the king. It was a royal present in price, for it had cost two 
thousand livres. The famous dispute between Lady Castle- 
maine and Miss Stuart, afterw r ard Duchess of Richmond, arose 
about this caleche. The Queen and the Duchess of York ap- 
peared first in it in Hyde Park, which had then recently been 
fenced in with brick. Lady Castlemaine thought that the 
caleche showed off a fine figure better than the coach ; Miss 
Stuart was of the same opinion. Both these grown-up babies 
wished to have the coach on the same day, but Miss Stuart 
prevailed. 

The queen condescended to laugh at the quarrels of these 



A CHAPLAIN IN LIVERY. 81 

two foolish women, and complimented the Chevalier de Gram- 
mont on his present. " But how is it," she asked, " that you 
do not even keep a footman, and that one of the common run- 
ners in the street lights you home with a link ?" 

"Madam," he answered, " the Chevalier de Grammont hates 
pomp : my link-boy is faithful and brave." Then he told the 
queen that he saw she was unacquainted with the nation of 
link-boys, and related how that he had, at one time, had one 
hundred and sixty around his chair at night, and people had 
asked " whose funeral it was?" "As for the parade of coach- 
es and footmen," he added, "I despise it. I have sometimes 
had live or six valets-de-chambre, without a single footman in 
livery except my chaplain." 

" How !" cried the queen, laughing, " a chaj)lain in livery ? 
surely he was not a priest." 

" Pardon, Madame, a priest, and the best dancer in the 
world of the Biscayan jig." 

" Chevalier," said the king, " tell us the history of your 
chaplain Poussatin." 

Then De Grammont related how, when he was with the 
great Conde, after the campaign of Catalonia, he had seen 
among a company of Catalans, a priest in a little black jacket, 
skipping and frisking: how Conde was charmed, and how they 
recognized in him a Frenchman, and how he offered himself to 
De Grammont for his chaplain. De Grammont had not much 
need, he said, for a chaplain in his house, but he took the priest, 
who had afterward the honor of dancing before Anne of Aus- 
tria, in Paris. 

Suitor after suitor interfered with De Grammont's at last 
honorable address to La Belle Hamilton. At length an inci- 
dent occurred which had very nearly separated them forever. 
Philibert de Grammont was recalled to Paris by Louis XIII. 
He forgot, Frenchman-like, all his engagements to Miss Ham- 
ilton, and hurried off. He had reached Dover, when her two 
brothers rode up after him. " Chevalier de Grammont," they 
said, " have you forgotten nothing in London ?" 

" I beg your pardon," he answered, " I forgot to marry your 
sister." It is said that this story suggested to Moliere the idea 
of Le Manage force. They were, however, married. 

In 1669 La Belle Hamilton, after giving birth to a child, 
went to reside in France. Charles II., who thought she would 
pass for a handsome woman in France, recommended her to 
his sister Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans, and begged her to be 
kind to her. 

Henceforth the Chevalier de Grammont and his wife figured 
at Versailles, where the Countess de Grammont was appoint- 

D2 



82 de grammont's last hours. 

ed Dame de Palais. Her career was less brilliant than in En- 
gland. The French ladies deemed her haughty and old, and 
even termed her une Anglaise insupportable. 

She had certainly too much virtue, and perhaps too much 
beauty still, for the Parisian ladies of fashion at that period to 
admire her. 

She endeavored, in vain, to reclaim her libertine husband, 
and to call him to a sense of his situation when he was on his 
death-bed. Louis XIV. sent the Marquis de Dangeau to con- 
vert him, and to talk to him on a subject little thought of by 
De Grammont — the world to come. After the marquis had 
been talking for some time, De Grammont turned to his wife 
and said, " Countess, if you don't look to it, Dangeau will jug- 
gle you out of my conversion." St. Evremond said he would 
gladly die to go off with so successful a bon-mot. 

He became, however, in time, serious, if not devout or pen- 
itent. Ninon de l'Enclos having written to St. Evremond that 
the Count de Grammont had not only recovered but had be- 
come devout, St. Evremond answered her in these words : 

" I have learned with a great deal of pleasure that the Count 
de Grammont has recovered his former health and acquired a 
new devotion."* 

A report having been circulated that De Grammont was 
dead, St. Evremond expressed deep regret. The report was 
contradicted by Ninon de l'Enclos. The count was then 
eighty-six years of age; "nevertheless he was," Ninon says, 
" so young that I think him as lively as when he hated sick 
people, and loved them after they had recovered their health ;" 
a trait very descriptive of a man whose good-nature was al- 
ways on the surface, but whose selfishness was deep as that 
of most wits and beaux, who are spoiled by the world, and 

* "The Count de Grammont fell dangerously ill in the year 1696, of 
which the King (Louis XIV.) being informed, and knowing, besides, that 
he was inclined to libertinism, he was pleased to send the Marquis of Dan- 
geau to see how he did, and to advise him to think of God. Hereupon 
Count de Grammont, turning toward his wife, who had ever been a very de- 
vout lady, told her, ' Countess, if you don't look to it, Dangeau will juggle 
you out of my conversion!' Madame de l'Enclos having afterward written 
to M. de St. Evremond that Count de Grammont was recovered, and turned 
devout, 'I have learned,' answered he to her, 'with a great deal of pleasure 
that Count de Grammont has recovered his former health, and acquired a 
new devotion. Hitherto I have been contented with being a plain, honest 
man ; but I must do something more ; and I only wait for your example to 
become a devotee. You live in a country where people have wondeiful ad- 
vantages of saving their souls : there, vice is almost as opposite to the mode 
as virtue ; sinning passes for ill-breeding, and shocks decency and good man- 
ners as much as religion. Formerly it was enough to be wicked, now one 
must be a scoundrel withal, to be damned in France.' " 



WHAT MIGHT HE NOT HAVE BEEN? 83 

who, in return, distrust and deceive the spoilers. This long 
life of eighty-six years, endowed as De Grammont was with 
elasticity of spirits, good fortune, considerable talent, an ex- 
cellent position, a wit that never ceased to flow in a clear cur- 
rent; with all these advantages, what might he not have been 
to society had his energy been well applied, his wit innocent, 
his talents employed worthily, and his heart as sure to stand 
muster as his manners? 



BEAU FIELDING. 

" Let us be wise, boys, here's a fool coming," said a sensible 
man, when he saw Beau Nash's splendid carriage draw up to 
the door. Is a beau a fool ? Is a sharper a fool ? "Was Bona- 
parte a fool ? If you reply " no" to the last two questions, 
you must give the same answer to the first. A beau is a fox, 
but not a fool — a very clever fellow, who, knowing the weak- 
ness of his brothers and sisters in the world, takes advantage 
of it to make himself a fame and a fortune. Nash, the son of 
a glass-merchant — Brummell, the hopeful of a small shopkeep- 
er — became the intimates of princes, dukes, and fashionables ; 
were petty kings of Vanity Fair, and were honored by their 
subjects. In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is 
king; in the realm of folly, the sharper is a monarch. The only 
proviso is, that the cheat come not within the jurisdiction of 
the law. Such a cheat is the beau or dandy, or fine gentleman, 
who imposes on his public by his clothes and appearance. 
Bona-fide monarchs have done as much ; Louis XIV. won him- 
self the title of Le Grand Monarque by his manners, his dress, 
and his vanity. Fielding, Nash, and Brummell did nothing- 
more. It is not a question whether such roads to eminence be 
contemptible or not, but whether their adoption in one station 
of life be more so than in another. Was Brummell a whit 
more contemptible than " Wales ?" Or is John Thomas, the 
pride and glory of the " Domestics' Free-and-Easy," whose 
whiskers, figure, face, and manner are all superb, one atom 
more ridiculous than your recognized beau ? I trow not. 
What right, then, has your beau to a place among wits ? I 
fancy Chesterfield would be much disgusted at seeing his name 
side by side with that of Nash in this volume ; yet Chesterfield 
had no objection, when at Bath, to do homage to the king of 
that city, and may have prided himself on exchanging pinches 
from diamond-set snuff-boxes with that superb gold-laced dig- 
nitary in the Pump-room. Certainly, people who thought 
little of Philip Dormer Stanhope thought a great deal of the 
glass-merchant's reprobate son when he was in power, and sub- 
mitted without a murmur to his impertinences. The fact is, 
that the beaux and the wits are more intimately connected than 
the latter would care to own : the wits have all been, or aspired 
to be, beaux, and beaux have had their fair share of wit ; both 



86 ON WITS AND BEAUX. 

lived for the same purpose — to shine in society ; both used the 
same means, coats, and bon-mots. The only distinction is, that 
the garments of the beaux were better, and their sayings not 
so good as those of the wits ; while the conversation of the 
wits was better, and their apparel not so striking as those of 
the beaux. So, my Lord Chesterfield, who prided yourself 
quite as much on being a fine gentleman as on being a fine wit, 
you can not complain at your proximity to Mr. Nash and oth- 
ers who tcere fine gentlemen, and would have been fine wits 
if they could. 

Robert Fielding was, perhaps, the least of the beaux ; but 
then, to make up for this, he belonged to a noble family ; he 
married a duchess, and, what is more, he beat her. Surely in 
the kingdom of fools such a man is not to be despised. You 
may be sure he did not think he was, for was he not made the 
subject of two papers in " The Tatler," and what more could 
a man desire ? 

His father Avas a Suffolk squire, claiming relationship with 
the Earls of Denbigh, and, therefore, with the Hapsburgs, from 
whom the Beau and the Emperors of Austria had the common 
honor of being descended. Perhaps neither of them had suf- 
ficient sense to be proud of the greatest intellectual ornament 
of their race, the author of " Tom Jones ;" but as our hero was 
dead before the humorist was born, it is not fair to conjecture 
what he might have thought on the subject. 

It does not appear that Aery much is known of this great 
gem of the race of Hapsburg. He had the misfortune to be 
\ r ery handsome, and the folly to think that his face would be 
his fortune : it certainly stood him in good stead at times, but 
it also brought him into a lamentable dilemma. 

His father Avas not rich, and sent his son to the Temple to 
study laAvs which he Avas only fitted to break. The young Ado- 
nis had sense enough to see that destiny did not beckon him 
to fame in the gloom of a musty laAV court, and removed a lit- 
tle farther up to the Thames, and the more fashionable region 
of Scotland Yard. Here, where uoav Z. 300 repairs to report 
his investigations to a Commissioner, the young dandies of 
Charles II.'s day strutted in gay doublets, SAVore hasty oaths 
of choice in\'ention, smoked the true Tobago from huge pipe- 
bowls, and ogled the fair but not too bashful dames who pass- 
ed to and fro in their chariots. The court took its name from 
the royalties of Scotland, Avho, when they visited the South, 
w'ere there lodged as being conveniently near to Whitehall 
Palace. It is odd enough that the three architects, Inigo Jones, 
Vanbrugh, and Wren, all lived in this yard. 

It Avas not to be supposed that a man AA r ho could so well 



ORLANDO OF " THE TATLER." 87 

appreciate a handsome face and well-cut doublet as Charles II. 
should long overlook his neighbor, Mr. Robert Fielding, and 
in due course the Beau, who had no other diploma, found him- 
self in the honorable position of a justice of the peace. 

The emoluments of this office enabled Orlando, as "The 
Tatler" calls him, to shine forth in all his glory. With an en- 
viable indifference to the future, he launched out into an ex- 
penditure which alone would have made him popular in a 
country where the heaviest purse makes the greatest gentle- 
man. His lackeys were arrayed in the brightest yellow coats 
with black sashes — the Hapsburg colors. He had a carriage, 
of course, but like Sheridan, whom his gave so much trouble 
to pay for, it was hired, though drawn by his own horses. 
This carriage was described as being shaped like a sea-shell ; 
and " The Tatler" calls it " an open tumbril of less size than 
ordinary, to show the largeness of his limbs and the grandeur 
of his personage to the best advantage." The said limbs were 
his especial pride: he gloried in the strength of his leg and 
arm ; and when he walked down the street, he was followed 
by an admiring crowd, whom he treated with as much haugh- 
tiness as if he had been the emperor himself, instead of his 
cousin five hundred times removed. He used his strength to 
good or bad purpose, and was a redoubted fighter and bully, 
though good-natured withal. In the Mall, as he strutted, he 
was the cynosure of all female eyes. His dress had all the ele- 
gance of which the graceful costume of that period was capa- 
ble, though Fielding did not, like Brummell, understand the 
delicacy of a quiet, but studied style. Those were simpler, 
somewhat more honest days. It was not necessary for a man 
to cloak his vices, nor be ashamed of his cloak. The beau 
then-a-day openly and arrogantly gloried in the grandeur of 
his attire ; and bragging was a part of his character. Field- 
ing was made by his tailor ; Brummell made his tailor : the 
only point in common to both, Avas that neither of them paid 
the tailor's bill. The fine gentleman, under the Stuarts, was 
fine only in his lace and his velvet doublet ; his language was 
coarse, his manners coarser, his vices the coarsest of all. No 
wonder when the king himself could get so drunk with Sedley 
and Buckhurst, as to be unable to give an audience appointed 
for ; and when the chief fun of his two companions was to di- 
vest themselves of all the habiliments which civilization has 
had the ill taste to make necessary, and in that state run about 
the streets. 

Orlando wore the finest ruffles and the heaviest sword ; his 
wig was combed to perfection ; and in his pocket he carried a 
little comb with which to arrange it from time to time, even 



88 ADONIS IN SEARCH OF A WIPE. 

as the dandy of to-day pulls out his whiskers or curls his 
mustache. Such a man could not be passed over ; aud ac- 
cordingly he numbered half the officers and gallants of the 
town among his intimates. He drank, swore, and swaggered, 
and the snobs of the day proclaimed him " a complete gentle- 
man." 

His impudence, however, was not always tolerated. In the 
playhouses of the day, it was the fashion for some of the spec- 
tators to stand upon the stage, and the places in that position 
were chiefly occupied by young gallants. The ladies came 
most in masks ; but this did not prevent Master Fielding from 
making his remarks very freely, and in no very refined strain 
to them. The modest damsels, whom Pope has described, 

' ' The fair sat pouting at the courtier's play, 
And not a mask went unimproved away : 
The modest fan was lifted up no more, 
And virgins smiled at what they blushed before," 

were not too coy to be pleased with the fop's attentions, and 
replied in like strain. The players were unheeded ; the audi- 
ence laughed at the improvised and natural wit, when careful- 
ly prepared dialogues failed to fix their attention. The actors 
were disgusted, and, in spite of Master Fielding's herculean 
strength, kicked him off the stage, with a warning not to come 
again. 

The role of a beau is expensive to keep up; and our justice 
of the peace could not, like Nash, double his income by gam- 
ing. He soon got deep in debt, as every celebrated dresser 
has done. The old story, not new even in those days, was en- 
acted, and the brilliant Adonis had to keep watch and ward 
against tailors and bailiffs. On one occasion they had nearly 
caught him ; but, his legs being lengthy, he gave them fair 
sport as far as St. James's Palace, where the officers on guard 
rushed out to save their pet, and drove off the myrmidons of 
the law at the point of the sword. 

But debts do not pay themselves, nor die, and Orlando with 
all his strength and prowess could not long keep off the con- 
stable. Evil days gloomed at no very great distance before 
him, and the fear of a sponging-house and debtors' prison com- 
pelled him to turn his handsome person to account. Had he 
not broken a hundred hearts already ? had he not charmed a 
thousand pairs of beaming eyes ? was there not one owner of 
one pair w T ho was also possessed of a pretty fortune ? Who 
should have the honor of being the wife of such an Adonis ? 
who, indeed, but she who could pay highest for it ; and who 
could pay with a handsome income but a well-dowered widow ? 
A widow it must be — a widow it should be. Noble indeed 



THE SHAM WIDOW. 89 

was the sentiment which inspired this great man to sacrifice 
himself on the altar of Hymen for the good of his creditors. 
Ye young men in the Guards, who do this kind of thing every 
day — that is, every day that you can meet with a widow with 
the proper qualifications — take warning by the lamentable his- 
tory of Mr. Robert Fielding, and never trust to " third par- 
ties." 

A widow was found, fat, fair, and forty — and oh ! — charm 
greater far than all the rest — with a fortune of sixty thousand 
pounds ; this was a Mrs. Deleau, who lived at Whaddon in 
Surrey, and at Copthall Court in London. Nothing could be 
more charming ; and the only obstacle was the absence of all 
acquaintance between the parties — for, of course, it was im- 
possible for any widow, whatever her attractions, to be in- 
sensible to those of Robert Fielding. Under these circum- 
stances, the Beau looked about for an agent, and found one in 
the person of a Mrs. Villars, hairdresser to the widow. He 
offered this person a handsome douceur in case of success, and 
she was to undertake that the lady should meet the gentleman 
in the most unpremeditated manner. Various schemes were 
resorted to : with the alias, for he was not above an alias, of 
Major General Villars, the Beau called at the widow's country 
house, and was permitted to see the gardens. At a window 
he espied a lady, whom he took to be the object of his pursuit 
— bowed to her majestically, and w r ent away, persuaded he 
must have made an impression. But, Avhether the widow was 
wiser than Avearers of weeds have the reputation of being, or 
whether the agent had really no power in the matter, the 
meeting never came off. 

The hairdresser naturally grew anxious, the douceur was 
too good to be lost, and as the widow could not be had, some 
one must be supplied in her place. 

One day while the Beau was sitting in his splendid "night- 
gown," as the morning-dress of gentlemen was then called, 
two ladies were ushered into his august presence. He had 
been warned of this visit, and was prepared to receive the 
yielding widow. The one, of course, was the hairdresser, the 
other a young, pretty, and apparently modest creature, who 
blushed much — though with some difficult)- — at the trying- 
position in which she found herself. The Beau, delighted, did 
his best to reassure her. He flung himself at her feet, swore, 
with oaths more fashionable than delicate, that she was the 
only woman he ever loved, and prevailed on the widow so far 
as to induce her to " call again to-morrow." 

Of course she came, and Adonis was in heaven. He wrote 
little poems to her — for, as a gallant, he could of course make 



90 WAYS AND MEANS. 

verses — serenaded her through an Italian donna, invited her 
to suppers, at which the delicacies of the season were served 
without regard to the purveyor's account, and to which, coy 
as she was, she consented to come, and clenched the engage- 
ment with a ring, on which was the motto, " Tibi Soli." Nay, 
the Beau had been educated, and had some knowledge of "the 
tongues," so that he added to these attentions the farther one 
of a song or two translated from the Greek. The widow ought 
to have been pleased, and was. One thing only she stipulated, 
namely, that the marriage should be private, lest her relations 
should forbid the banns. 

Having brought her so far, it was not likely that the for- 
tune-hunter would stick at such a mere trifle, and according- 
ly an entertainment was got up at the Beau's own rooms, a 
supper, suitable to the rank and wealth of the widow, pro- 
vided by some obligingly credulous tradesman ; a priest found 
— for, be it premised, our hero had changed so much of his- 
religion as he had to change in the reign of James II., when 
Romanism was not only fashionable, but a sure road to fortune 
— and the mutually satisfied couple swore to love, honor, and 
obey one another till death them should part. 

The next morning, however, the widow left the gentleman's 
lodgings, on the pretext that it was injudicious for her friends 
to know of their union at present, and continued to visit her 
sposo and sup somewhat amply at his chambers from time to 
time. We can imagine the anxiety Orlando now felt for a 
check -book at the heiress's bankers, and the many insinua- 
tions he may have delicately made, touching ways and means. 
We can fancy the artful excuses with which these hints were 
put aside by his attached wife. But the dupe was still in 
happy ignorance of the trick played on him, and for a time 
such ignorance was bliss. It must have been trying to him to 
be called on by Mrs. Villars for the promised douceur, but he 
consoled himself with the pleasures of hope. 

Unfortunately, however, he had formed the acquaintance of 
a woman of a very different reputation to the real Mrs. Deleau, 
and the intimacy which ensued was fatal to him. 

When Charles II. was wandering abroad, he was joined, 
among others, by a Mr. and Mrs. Palmer. The husband was 
a stanch old Romanist, with the qualities which usually ac- 
companied that faith in those days — little respect for morality, 
and a good deal of bigotry. In later days he was one of the 
victims of Titus Oates, but escaped, and eventually died in 
Wales in 1705, after having been James II.'s embassador to 
Rome. This, in a few words, is the history of that Roger 
Palmer, afterward Lord Castlemaine, who sold his wife — not 



BARBARA VILLIERS, IADY CASTLEMAINE. 91 

at Smithfield, but at Whitehall — to His Majesty King Charles 
II., for the sum of one peerage — an Irish one, taken on consid- 
eration. 

Mrs. Palmer belonged to one of the oldest families in En- 
gland, and could trace her descent to Pagan de Villiers, in the 
days of William Rufus, and a good deal farther among the 
nobles of Normandy. She was the daughter of William, sec- 
ond Viscount Grandison, and rejoiced in the appropriate name 
of Barbara, for she could be savage occasionally. She was 
very beautiful, and very wicked, and soon became Charles's 
mistress. On the Restoration she joined the king in England, 
and when the poor neglected queen came over, was foisted 
upon her as bedchamber-woman, in spite of all the objections 
of that ill-used wife. It was necessary to this end that she 
should be the wife of a peer ; and her low-minded husband act- 
ually accepted the title of Earl of Castlemaine, well knowing 
to what he owed it. Pepys, who admired Lady Castlemaine 
more than any woman in England, describes the husband and 
wife meeting at Whitehall with a cold ceremonial bow ; yet 
the husband icas there, using the court power which his own 
shame procured for him. A quarrel between the two, strange- 
ly enough on the score of religion, her ladyship insisting that 
her child should be christened by a Protestant clergyman, 
while his lordship insisted on the ceremony being performed 
by a Romish priest, brought about a separation, and from that 
time Lady Castlemaine, lodged in Whitehall, began her empire 
over the king of England. That man, " who never said a fool- 
ish thing, and never did a wise one," was the slave of this im- 
perious and most impudent of Avomen. She forced him to set- 
tle on her an immense fortune, much of which she squandered 
at the basset-table, often staking a thousand pounds at a time, 
and sometimes losing fifteen thousand pounds a night. 

Nor did her wickedness end here. We have some pity for 
one, who, like La Valliere, could be attracted by the attentions 
of a handsome fascinating prince : we pity, though we blame. 
But Lady Castlemaine was vicious to the very marrow : not 
content with a king's favor, she courted herself the young gal- 
lant of the town. Quarrels ensued between Charles and his 
mistress, in which the latter invariably came off victorious, 
owing to her indomitable temper ; and the scenes recorded by 
De Grammont — when she threatened to burn down Whitehall, 
and tear her children in pieces — are too disgraceful for inser- 
tion. She forced the reprobate monarch to consent to all her 
extortionate demands ; rifled the nation's pockets as well as 
his own ; and at every fresh difference, forced Charles to give 
her some new pension. An intrigue with Jermyn, discovered 



92 THE BEAU'S SECOND MARRIAGE. 

and objected to by the king, brought on a fresh and more se- 
rious difference, which was only patched up by a patent of the 
Duchy of Cleveland. The Duchess of Cleveland was even 
worse than the Countess of Castlemaine. Abandoned in time 
by Charles, and detested by all people of any decent feeling, 
she consoled herself for the loss of a real king by taking up 
with a stage one. Hart and Goodman, the actors, were suc- 
cessively her cavalieri : the former had been a captain in the 
army ; the latter a student at Cambridge. Both were men of 
the coarsest minds and most depraved lives. Goodman, in 
after years, was so reduced that, finding, as Sheridan advised 
his son to do, a pair of pistols handy, a horse saddled, and 
Hounslow Heath not a hundred miles distant, he took to the 
pleasant and profitable pastime of which Dick Turpin is the pa- 
tron saint. He was all but hanged by his daring robberies, but 
unfortunately not quite so. He lived to suffer such indigence, 
that he and another rascal had but one under-garment between 
them, and entered into a compact that one should lie in bed 
while the other wore the article in question. Naturally enough 
the two fell out in time, and the end of Goodman — sad misno- 
mer — was worse than his beginning: such was the gallant 
whom the imperious Duchess of Cleveland vouchsafed to honor. 

The life of the once beautiful Barbara Villiers grew daily 
more and more depraved : at the age of thirty she retired to 
Paris, shunned and disgraced. After numerous intrigues, 
abroad and at home, she put the crowning point to her follies 
by falling in love with the handsome Fielding when she her- 
self numbered sixty-five summers. 

Whether the Beau still thought of fortune, or whether hav- 
ing once tried matrimony, he was so enchanted with it as to 
make it his cacoethes, does not appear : the legeud explains 
not for what reason he married the antiquated beauty only 
three weeks after he had been united to the supposed widow. 
For a time he wavered between the two, but that time was 
short: the widow discovered his second marriage, claimed him, 
and in so- doing revealed the well-kept secret that she was 
not a widow ; indeed, not even the relict of John Deleau, Esq., 
of Whaddon, but a wretched adventurer of the name of Mary 
Wadsworth, who had shared with Mrs. Villars the plunder of 
the trick. The Beau tried to preserve his dignity, and throw 
over his duper, but in vain. The first wife reported the state 
of affairs to the second ; and the duchess, who had been shame- 
fully treated by Master Fielding, was only too glad of an op- 
portunity to get rid of him. She offered Mary Wadsworth a 
pension of £100 a year, and the sum of £200 in ready money, 
to prove the previous marriage. The case came on, and Beau 



THE LAST DAYS OF FOPS AND BEAUX. 93 

Fielding had the honor of playing a part in a famous state 
trial. 

With his usual impudence he undertook to defend himself 
at the Old Bailey, and hatched up some old story to prove that 
the first wife was married at the time of their union to one 
Brady ; but the plea fell to the ground, and the fine gentleman 
was sentenced to be burnt in the hand. His interest in cer- 
tain quarters saved him this ignominious punishment, which 
would, doubtless, have spoiled a limb of which he was partic- 
ularly proud. He was pardoned : the real widow married a 
far more honorable gentleman, in spite of the unenviable noto- 
riety she had acquired ; the sham one was somehow quieted, 
and the duchess died some four years later, the more peacefully 
for being rid of her tyrannical mate. 

Thus ended a pretty scandal of the day, in which all the 
parties were so disreputable that no one could feel any sym- 
pathy for a single one of them. How the dupe himself ended 
is not known. The last days of fops and beaux are never glo- 
rious. Brummell died in slovenly penury ; Nash in contempt. 
Fielding lapsed into the dimmest obscurity ; and as far as evi- 
dence goes, there is as little certainty about his death as of that 
of the Wandering Jew. Let us hope that he is not still alive : 
though his friends seem to have cared little whether he were 
so or not, to judge from a couple of verses written by one of 
them : 

"If Fielding is dead, 

And rests under this stone, 
Then he is not alive 

You may bet two to one. 

"But if he's alive, 

And does not lie there — 
Let him live till he's hanged, 
For which no man will care." 



OF CERTAIN CLUBS AND CLUB-WITS UNDER ANNE. 

I suppose that, long before the building of Babel, man dis- 
covered that he was an associative animal, with the universal 
motto, " JO 'union c'est la force;'''' and that association, to be 
of any use, requires talk. A history of celebrated associa- 
tions, from the building society just mentioned down to the 
thousands which are represented by an office, a secretary, and 
a brass plate, in the present day, would give a curious scheme 
of the natural tendencies of man ; while the story of their fail- 
ures — and how many have not failed, sooner or later ! — would 
be a pretty moral lesson to your anthropolaters who Babel- 
ize nowadays, and believe there is nothing which a company 
with capital can not achieve. I wonder what object there is, 
that two men can possibly agree in desiring, and which it 
takes more than one to attain, for which an association of 
some kind has not been formed at some time or other, since 
first the swarthy savage learned that it was necessary to unite 
to kill the lion which infested the neighborhood ! Alack for 
human nature! I fear by far the larger proportion of the ob- 
jects of associations would be found rather evil than good, 
and, certes, nearly all of them might be ranged under two 
heads, according as the passions of hate or desire found a com- 
mon object in several hearts. Gain on the one hand — destruc- 
tion on the other — have been the chief motives of clubbing in 
all time. 

A delightful exception is to be found, though — to wit, in as- 
sociations for the purpose of talking. I do not refer to parlia- 
ments and philosophical academies, but to those companies 
which have been formed for the sole purpose of mutual enter- 
tainment by interchange of thought. 

Now, will any kind reader oblige me with a derivation of 
the word "Club?" I doubt if it is easy to discover. But one 
thing is certain, whatever its origin, it is, in its present sense, 
purely English in idea and in existence. Dean Trench points 
this out, and, noting the fact that no other nation (he might 
have excepted the Chinese) has any word to express this kind 
of association, he has, with very pardonable national pride, but 
unpardonably bad logic, inferred that the English are the most 
sociable people in the world. The contrary is true ; nay, was 
time, even in the days of Addison, Swift, Steele — even in the 



96 THE ORIGIN OF CLUBS. — COFFEE-HOUSES. 

days of Johnson, Walpole, Selwyn ; ay, at all time since we 
have been a nation. The fact is, we are not the most socia- 
ble, but the most associative race ; and the establishment of 
clubs is a proof of it. We can not, and never could, talk free- 
ly, comfortably, and generally, without a company for talking. 
Conversation has always been with us as much a business as 
railroad-making, or what not. It has always demanded cer- 
tain accessories, certain condiments, certain stimulants to work 
it up to the proper pitch. " We all know" we are the clever- 
est and wittiest people under the sun ; but then our wit has 
been stereotyped. France has no " Joe Miller ;" for a bon- 
mot there, however good, is only appreciated historically. 
Our wit is printed, not spoken : our best wits behind an ink- 
horn have sometimes been the veriest logs in society. On the 
Continent clubs were not called for, because society itself was 
the arena of conversation. In this country, on the other hand, 
a man could only chat when at his ease ; could only be at his 
ease among those who agreed with him on the main points of 
religion and politics, and even then wanted the aid of a bottle 
to make him comfortable. Our want of sociability was the 
cause of our clubbing, and therefore the word " club" is pure- 
ly English. 

This was never so much the case as after the Restoration. 
Religion and politics never ran higher than when a monarch, 
who is said to have died a papist because he had no religion 
at all during his life, was brought back to supplant a furious 
puritanical Protectorate. Then, indeed, it was difficult for men 
of opposite parties to meet without bickering ; and society 
demanded separate meeting-places for those who differed. 
The origin of clubs in this country is to be traced to two 
causes — the vehemence of religion and political partisanship, 
and the establishment of coffee-houses. These certainly gave 
the first idea of clubbery. The taverns which preceded them 
had given the English a zest for public life in a small way. 
"The Mermaid" was, virtually, a club of wits long before the 
first real club was opened, and, like the clubs of the eight- 
eenth century, it had its presiding geniuses in Shakspeare and 
Rave Ben. 

The coffee-houses introduced somewhat more refinement and 
less exclusiveness. The oldest of these was the " Grecian." 
" One Constantino, a Grecian," advertised in "The Intelligen- 
cer" of January 23d, 1G64-5, "that the right coffee bery or 
chocolate" might be had of him " as cheap and as good as is 
any where to be had for money," and soon after began to sell 
the said " coffee bery" in small cuj)S at his own establishment 
in Devereux Court, Strand. Some two years later we have 



THE OCTOBER, CLUB. 97 

news of " Will's," the most famous, perhaps, of the coffee- 
houses. Here Dryden held forth with pedantic vanity ; and 
here was laid the first germ of that critical acumen which has 
since become a distinguishing feature in English literature. 
Then, in the City, one Garraway, of Exchange Alley, first sold 
" tea in leaf and drink, made according to the directions of the 
most knowing, and travelers into those eastern countries ;" 
and thus established the well-known Garraway's, whither, in 
Defoe's day, " foreign banquiers" and even ministers resorted, 
to drink the said beverage. "Robin's," "Jonathan's," and 
many another, were all opened about this time, and the rage 
for coffee-house life became general throughout the country. 

In these places the company was of course of all classes and 
colors ; but, as the conversation was general, there was nat- 
urally at first a good deal of squabbling, till, for the sake of 
peace and comfort, a man chose his place of resort according 
to his political principles ; and a little later there were regular 
Whig and Tory coffee-houses. Thus, in Anne's day, " The 
Cocoanut," in St. James's Street, was reserved for Jacobites, 
while none but Whigs frequented " The St. James's." Still 
there was not sufficient exclusiveness ; and as early as in Charles 
II.'s reign, men of peculiar opinions began to appropriate cer- 
tain coffee-houses at certain hours, and to exclude from them 
all but approved members. Hence the origin of clubs. 

The October Club was one of the earliest, being composed 
of some hundred and fifty rank Tories, chiefly country mem- 
bers of Parliament. They met at the " Bell," in King Street, 
Westminster, that street in which Spenser starved, and Dry- 
den's brother kept a grocer's shop. A portrait of Queen Anne, 
by Dahl, hung in the club-room. This and the Kit-kat, the 
great Whig club, were chiefly reserved for politics ; but the 
fashion of clubbing having once come in, it was soon followed 
by people of all fancies. No reader of the " Spectator" can 
fail to remember the ridicule to which this was turned by de- 
scriptions of imaginary clubs for which the qualifications were 
absurd, and of which the business, on meeting, was preposter- 
ous nonsense of some kind. The idea of such fraternities, as 
the Club of Fat Men, the Ugly Club, the Sheromp Club, the 
Everlasting Club, the Sighing Club, the Amorous Club, and 
others, could only have been suggested by real clubs almost as 
ridiculous. The names, too, were almost as fantastical as those 
of the taverns in the previous century, which counted " The 
Devil," and "The Heaven and Hell," among their numbers. 
Many derived their titles from the standing dishes preferred 
at supper, the Beefsteak and the Kit-kat (a sort of mutton-pie) 
for instance. 

E 



98 THE BEEFSTEAK CLUB. 

The Beefsteak Club, still in existence, was one of the most 
famous established in Anne's reign. It had at that time less 
of a political than a jovial character. Nothing but that excel- 
lent British fare, from which it took its name, was, at first, 
served at the supper-table. It was an assemblage of wits of 
every station, and very jovial were they supposed to be when 
the juicy dish had been discussed. Early in the century, Est- 
court, the actor, was made providore to this club, and wore a 
golden gridiron as a badge of office, and is thus alluded to in 
Dr. King's "Art of Cookery" (1709) :— 

"He that of honor, wit, and mirth partakes, 
May be a fit companion o'er beefsteaks ; 
His name may be to future times enrolled 
In Estcourt's book, whose gridiron's framed of gold." 

Estcourt was one of the best mimics of the day, and a keen 
satirist to boot : in fact he seems to have owed much of his suc- 
cess on the stage to his power of imitation, for while his own 
manner was inferior, he could at pleasure copy exactly that of 
any celebrated actor. He would be a player. At fifteeu he 
ran away from home, and joining a strolling company, acted 
Roxana in woman's clothes ; his friends pursued him, and, 
changing his dress for that of a girl of the time, he tried to 
escape them, but in vain. The histrionic youth was captured, 
and bound apprentice in London town ; the " seven long years" 
of which did not cure him of the itch for acting. But he was 
too good a wit for the stage, and amused himself, though not 
always his audience, by interspersing his part with his own re- 
marks. The great took him by the hand, and old Marlborough 
especially patronized him : he wrote a burlesque of the Italian 
operas then beginning to be in vogue; and died in 1712-13. 
Estcourt was not the only actor belonging to the Beefsteak, 
nor even the only one who had concealed his sex under emer- 
gency ; Peg Woffington, who had made as good a boy as he 
had done a girl, was afterward a member of this club. 

In later years the beefsteak was cooked in a room at the top 
of Covent Garden Theatre, and counted many a celebrated 
wit among those who sat around its cheery dish. Wilkes the 
blasphemer, Churchill, and Lord Sandwich, were all members 
of it at the same time. Of the last, Walpole gives us informa- 
tion in 1763 at the time of Wilkes' duel with Martin in Hyde 
Park. He tells us that at the Beefsteak Club Lord Sandwich 
talked so profusely, "that he drove harlequins out of the com- 
pany." To the honor of the club be it added, that his lord- 
ship was driven out after the harlequins, and finally expelled : 
it is sincerely to be hoped that Wilkes was sent after his, lord- 
snip. This club is now represented by one held behind the 



THE KIT-KAT CLUB. 99 

Lyceum, with the thoroughly British motto, " Beef and Lib- 
erty :" the name was happily chosen, and therefore imitated. 
In the reign of George II. we meet with a " Rump-steak, or 
Liberty Club ;" and somehow steaks and liberty seem to be 
the two ideas most intimately associated in the Britannic mind. 
Can any one explain it ? 

Other clubs there were under Anne — political, critical, and 
hilarious — but the palm is undoubtedly carried off by the glo- 
rious Kit-kat. 

It is not every eating-house that is immortalized by a Pope, 
though Tennyson has sung " The Cock" with its " plump head- 
waiter," who, by the way, was mightily offended by the Lau- 
reate's verses — or pretended to be so — and thought it " a great 
liberty of Mr. , Mr. , what is his name ? to put re- 
spectable private characters into his books." Pope, or some 
say Arbuthnot, explained the etymology of this club's extra- 
ordinary title : — 

" Whence deathless Kit-kat took its name, 
Few critics can unriddle ; 
Some say from pastry-cook it came, 
And some from Cat and Fiddle. 

"From no trim beaux its name it boasts, 
Gray statesmen or preen wits ; 
But from the pell-mell pack of toasts 
Of old cats and young kits." 

Probably enough the title was hit on at hap-hazard, and re- 
tained because it was singular, but as it has given a poet a 
theme, and a painter a name for pictures of a peculiar size, its 
etymology has become important. Some say that the pastry- 
cook in Shire Lane, at whose house it waa held, was named 
Christopher Katt. Some one or other was certainly celebra- 
ted for the manufacture of that forgotten delicacy, a mutton- 
pie, which acquired the name of a Kit-kat. 

" A Kit-kat is a supper for a lord," 
says a comedy of 1700, and certes it afforded at this club even- 
ing nourishment for many a celebrated noble profligate of the 
day. The supposed sign of the Cat and Fiddle (Kitt), gave 
another solution, but after all, Pope's may be satisfactorily re- 
ceived. 

The Kit-kat was, par excellence, the Whig Club of Qneen 
Anne's time: it was established at the beginning of the eight- 
eenth century, and was then composed of thirty-nine members, 
among whom were the Dukes of Marlborough, Devonshire, 
Grafton, Richmond, and Somerset. In later days, it numbered 
the greatest wits of the age, of whom anon. 

This club was celebrated more than any for its toasts. 



100 THE ROMANCE OF THE BOWL. 

Now, if men must drink — and sure the vine was given us 
for use, I do not say for abuse — they had better make it an 
occasion of friendly intercourse ; nothing can be more degraded 
than the solitary sanctimonious toping in which certain of our 
Northern brethren are known to indulge. They had better 
give to the quaffing of that rich gift, sent to be a medicine for 
the mind, to raise us above the perpetual contemplation of 
worldly ills, as much of romance and elegance as possible. It 
is the opener of the heart, the awakener of nobler feelings of 
generosity and love, the banisher of all that is narrow, and 
sordid, and selfish ; the herald of all that is exalted in man. 
No wonder that the Greeks made a god of Bacchus, that the 
Hindoo worshiped the mellow Soma, and that there has been 
scarce a poet who has not sung its praise. There was some 
beauty in the feasts of the Greeks, when the goblet was really 
wreathed with flowers ; and even the German student, dirty 
and drunken as he may be, removes half the stain from his 
orgies with the rich harmony of his songs, and the hearty 
good-fellowship of his toasts. We drink still, perhaps we 
shall always drink till the end of time, but all the romance of 
the bowl is gone ; the last trace of its beauty went with the 
frigid abandonment of the toast. 

There was some excuse for wine when it brought out that 
now forgotten expression of good-will. Many a feud was rec- 
onciled in the clinking of glasses ; just as many another was 
begun when the cup was drained too deeply. The first quar- 
ter of the last century saw the end of all the social glories of 
the wassail in this country, and though men drank as much fifty 
years later, all its poetry and romance had then disappeared. 

It was still, however, the custom at that period to call on 
the name of some fair maiden, and sing her praises over the 
cup as it passed. It was a point of honor for all the company 
to join the health. Some beauties became celebrated for the 
number of their toasts ; some even standing toasts among cer- 
tain sets. In the Kit-kat Club the custom was carried out by 
rule, and every member was compelled to name a beauty, 
whose claims to the honor were then discussed, and if her 
name was approved, a separate bowl was consecrated to her, 
and verses to her honor engraved on it. Some of the most 
celebrated toasts had even their portraits hung in the club- 
room, and it was no slight distinction to be the favorite of the 
Kit-kat. When only eight years old, Lady Mary Wortley 
Montagu enjoyed this privilege. Her father, the Lord Dor- 
chester, afterward Evelyn, Duke of Kingston, in a fit of ca- 
price, proposed " the pretty little child" as his toast. The 
other members, who had never seen her, objected; the Peer 



THE MEMBERS OP THE KIT-KAT. 101 

sent for her, and there could no longer be any question. The 
forward little girl was handed from knee to knee, petted, prob- 
ably, by Addison, Congreve, Vanbrugh, Garth, and many an- 
other famous wit. Another celebrated toast of the Kit-kat, 
mentioned by Walpole, was Lady Molyneux, who, he says, died 
smoking a pipe. 

This club was no less celebrated for its portraits than for 
the ladies it honored. They, the portraits, were all painted 
by Kneller, and all of one size, which thence got the name of 
Kit-kat ; they were hung round the club-room. Jacob Ton- 
son, the publisher, was secretary to the club. 

Defoe tells us the Kit-kat held the first rank among the 
clubs of the early part of the last century, and certainly the 
names of its members comprise as many wits as we could ex- 
pect to find collected in one society. 

Addison must have been past fifty when he became a mem- 
ber of the Kit-kat. His " Cato" had won him the general ap- 
plause of the Whig party, who could not allow so fine a writer 
to slip from among them. He had long, too, played the court- 
ier, and was " quite a gentleman." A place among the exclu- 
sives of the Kit-kat was only the just reward of such attain- 
ments, and he had it. I shall not be asked to give a notice of 
a man so universally known, and one who ranks rather with 
the humorists than the wits. It will suffice to say, that it was 
not till after the publication of the " Spectator," and some time 
after, that he joined our society. 

Congreve I have chosen out of this set for a separate life, 
for this man happens to present a very average sample of all 
their peculiarities. Congreve was a literary man, a poet, a 
wit, a beau, and — what unhappily is quite as much to the pur- 
pose — a profligate. The only point he, therefore, wanted in 
common with most of the members, was a title ; but few of 
the titled members combined as many good and bad qualities 
of the Kit-kat kind as did William Congreve. 

Another dramatist, whose name seems to be inseparable 
from Congreve's, was that mixture of bad and good taste — 
Vanbrugh. This author of " The Relapse," the most licentious 
play ever acted, and builder of Blenheim, the ugliest house 
ever erected, was a man of good family, and Walpole counts 
him among those who " wrote genteel comedy, because they 
lived in the best company." We doubt the logic of this ; but 
if it hold, how is it that Van wrote plays which the best com- 
pany, even of that age, condemned, and neither good nor bad 
company can read in the present day without being shocked ? 
If the conversation of the Kit-kat was any thing like that in 
this member's comedies, it must have been highly edifying. 



102 A GOOD WIT, AND A BAD ARCHITECT. 

However, I have no doubt Mr. Van passed for a gentleman, 
whatever his conversation, and he was certainly a wit, and ap- 
parently somewhat less licentious in his morals than the rest. 
Yet what Pope said of his literature may be said, too, of some 
acts of his life : 

"How Van wants grace, who never wanted wit." 

And his quarrel with " Queen Sarah" of Marlborough, though 
the duchess was by no means the most agreeable woman in 
the world to deal with, is not much to Van's honor. When 
the nation voted half a million to build that hideous mass of 
stone, the irregular and unsightly piling ofwhich caused Wal- 
pole to say that the architect " had emptied quarries, rather 
than built houses," and Dr. Evans to write this epitaph for the 
builder — 

"Lie heavy on him, Earth, for he 
Laid many a heavy load on thee," 

Sarah haggled over " seven-pence halfpenny a bushel :" Van 
retorted by calling her " stupid and troublesome," and " that 
Avicked woman of Marlborough," and after the duke's death, 
wrote that the duke had left her " twelve thousand pounds 
a year to keep herself clean and go to law." Whether she 
em])loyed any portion of it on the former object we do not 
pretend to say, but she certainly spent as much as a miser 
could on litigation, Van himself being one of the unfortunates 
she attacked in this way. 

The events of Vanbrugh's life were varied. He began life 
in the army, but in 1697 gave the stage "The Relapse." It, 
was sufficiently successful to induce him to follow it up with 
the " Provoked Wife," one of the wittiest pieces produced in 
those days. Charles, Earl of Carlisle, Deputy Earl Marshal, for 
Avhom he built Castle Howard, made him Clarencieux King-at- 
arms in ] 704, and he was knighted by George I., 9th Septem- 
ber, 1714. In 1705 he joined Congreve in the management of 
the Haymarket, which he himself built. George I. made him 
Comptroller-general of the royal works. He had even an ex- 
perience of the Bastile, Avhere he was confined for sketching 
fortifications in France. He died in 1726, with the reputation 
of a good wit, and a bad architect. His conversation Avas, cer- 
tainly, as light as his buildings Avere heavy. 

Another member, almost as Avell knoAvn in his day, was Sir 
Samuel Garth, the physician, " Avell-natured Garth," as Pope 
called him. He w T on his fame by a satire on the apothecaries 
in the shape of a poem called " The Dispensary." When de- 
livering the funeral oration over Dryden's body, Avhich had 
been so long unburied that its odor began to be disagreeable, 



"well-natured garth." 103 

he mounted a tub, the top of which fell through and left the 
doctor in rather an awkward position. He gained admission 
to the Kit-kat in consequence of a vehement eulogy on King 
William, which he had introduced into his Harveian oration, 
in 1697.* It was Garth, too, who extemporized most of the 
verses which were inscribed on the toasting-glasses of their 
club, so that he may, par excellence, be considered the Kit-kat 
poet. He w r as the physician and friend of Marlborough, with 
Avhose sword he was' knighted by George I., who made him 
his physician in ordinary. Garth was a very jovial man, and, 
some say, not a very religious one. Pope said he was as good 
a Christian as ever lived, " without knowing it." He certainly 
had no affectation of piety, and if charitable and good-natured 
acts could take a man to heaven, he deserved to go there. He 
had his doubts about faith, and is said to have died a Roman- 
ist. This he did in 1719, and the poor and the Kit-kat must 
both have felt his loss. He w T as perhaps more of a wit than 
a poet, although he has been classed at times with Gray and 
Prior ; he can scarcely take the same rank as other verse-mak- 
ing doctors, such as Akenside, Darwin, and Armstrong. He 
seems to have been an active, healthy man — perhaps too much 
so for a poet — for it is on record that he ran a match in the 
Mall with the Duke of Grafton, and beat him. He was fond, 
too, of a hard frost, and had a regular speech to introduce on 
that subject : "Yes, sir, 'fore Gad, very fine weather, sir — very 
wholesome weather, sir — kills trees, sir — very good for man, 
sir." ^ . 

Old Marlborough had another intimate friend at the club, 
w T ho was probably one of its earliest members. This was Ar- 
thur Maynwaring, a poet, too, in a way, but more celebrated 
at this time for his liaison with Mrs. Oldfield, the famous but 
disreputable actress, with whom he fell in love when he was 
forty years old, and whom he instructed in the niceties of elo- 
cution, making her rehearse her parts to him in private. Mayn- 
waring was born in 1068, educated at Oxford, and destined to 
the bar, for which he studied. He began life as a vehement 
Jacobite, and even supported that party in sundry pieces ; but 
like some others, he was easily converted, when, on coming to 
town, he found it more fashionable to be a Whig. He held 
two or three* posts under the Government, whose cause he now 
espoused : had the honor of the dedication of " The Tatler" to 
him by Steele, and died suddenly in 1712. He divided his for- 
tune between his sister and his mistress, Mrs. Oldfield, and his 
son by the latter. Mrs. Oldfield must have grown rich in her 
sinful career, for she could afford, when ill, to refuse to take 
* The Kit-kat club was not founded till 1703. 



104 THE POETS OP THE KIT-KAT. 

her salary from the theatre, though entitled to it. She acted 
best in Vanbrugh's " Provoked Husband," so well, in fact, that 
the manager gave her an extra fifty pounds by way of acknowl- 
edgment. 

Poetizing seems to have been as much a polite accomplish- 
ment of that age as letter-writing was of a later, and a smat- 
tering of science is of the present day. Gentlemen tried to be 
poets, and poets gentlemen. The consequence was, that both 
made fools of themselves. Among the poetasters who belong- 
ed to the Kit-kat, we must mention Walsh, a country gentle- 
man, member of Parliament, and very tolerable scholar. He 
dabbled in odes, elegies, epitaphs, and all that small fry of the 
muse which was then so plentiful. He wrote critical essays on 
Virgil, in which he tried to make out that the shepherds in the 
days of the Roman poet were very well-bred gentlemen of good 
education ! He was a devoted admirer and friend of Dryden, 
and he encouraged Pope in his earlier career so kindly that the 
little viper actually praised him ! Walsh died somewhere about 
1709 in middle life. 

We have not nearly done with the poets of the Kit-kat. A 
still smaller one than Walsh was Stepney, who, like Garth, had 
begun life as a violent Tory and turned coat when he found his 
interest lay the other way. He was well repaid, for from 1692 
to 1706 he was sent on no less than eight diplomatic missions, 
chiefly to German courts. He owed this preferment to the 
good luck of having been a school-fellow of Charles Montagu, 
afterward Earl of Halifax. He died about 1707, and had as 
grand a monument and epitaph in Westminster Abbey as if 
he had been a Milton or Dryden. 

When you meet a dog trotting along the road, you natural- 
ly expect that his master is not far off. In the same way, where 
you find a poet, still more a poetaster, there you may feel cer- 
tain you will light upon a patron. The Kit-kat was made up 
of Maecenas's and their humble servants ; and in the same club 
with Addison, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and the minor poets, we 
are not at all surprised to find Sir Robert Walpole, the Duke 
of Somerset, Halifax, and Somers. 

Halifax was, par excellence, the Maecenas of his day, and Pope 
described him admirably in the character of Bufo : 

"Proud as Apollo, on his forked hill, 
Sat full-blown Bufo, puff d by every quill ; 
Fed with soft dedication all day long, 
Horace and he went hand in hand in song." 

The dedications poured in thickly. Steele, Tickell, Philips, 
Smith, and a crowd of lesser lights, raised my lord each one on 
a higher pinnacle ; and in return the powerful minister was not 



CHANCELLOR SOMERS. 105 

forgetful of the douceur which well-tuned verses were accus- 
tomed to receive. He himself had tried to be a poet, and in 
1703 wrote verses for the toasting-cups of the Kit-kat. His 
lines to a Dowager Countess of ****, are good enough to make 
us surprised that he never wrote any better. Take a speci- 
men : 

" Fair Queen of Fop-land in her royal style ; 

Fop-land the greatest part of this great isle ! 

Nature did ne'er so equally divide 

A female heart 'twixt piety and pride : 

Her waiting-maids prevent the peep of day, 

And all in order at her toilet lay 

Prayer-books, patch-boxes, sermon-notes, and paint, 

At once t' improve the sinner and the saint." 

A Maecenas who paid for his dedications was sure to be well 
spoken of, and Halifax has been made out a wit and a poet, 
as well as a clever statesman. He reminds me of a young 
Oxford man whom I knew in my college-days, and who never 
walked down the street without half a dozen loafers touching 
their hats to him. It was affirmed that he distributed sundry 
crowns among them in consideration of this honor ; and cer- 
tainly, when he left the university, I never spoke of him to any 
of that order of nondescripts who infest a university town with- 
out being assured that Mr. A was " one of the right sort 

— a rale gen'l'man he was, and no mistake." Halifax got his 
earldom and the garter from George I., and died, after enjoy- 
ing them less than a year, in 1715. 

Chancellor Somers, with whom Halifax was associated in 
the impeachment case in 1701, was a far better man in every 
respect. His was probably the purest character among those 
of all the members of the Kit-kat. He was the son of a Wor- 
cester attorney, and born in 1652. He was educated at Trin- 
ity, Oxford, and rose purely by merit, distinguishing himself 
at the bar and on the bench, unwearied in his application to 
business, and an exact and upright judge. At school he was 
a tei'rible good boy, keeping to his book in play-hours. 
Throughout life his habits were simple and regular, and his 
character unblemished. He slept but little, and in later years 
had a reader to attend him at waking. With such habits he 
can scarcely have been a constant attender at the club ; and 
as he died a bachelor, it would be curious to learn what ladies 
he selected for his toasts. In his later years his mind weak- 
ened, and he died in 1716 of apoplexy. Walpole calls him 
" one of those divine men Avho, like a chapel in a palace, re- 
main unprofaned, while all the rest is tyranny, corruption, and 
folly." 

A huge stout figure rolls in now to join the toasters in 

E 2 



10G CHARLES SACKVILLB, LORD DORSET. 

Shire Lane. In the puffy, once handsome face, there are signs 
of age, for its owner is past sixty ; yet he is dressed in superb 
fashion ; and in an hour or so, when the bottle has been dili- 
gently circulated, his wit will be brighter and keener than that 
of any young man present. I do not say it will be re])eatable, for 
the talker belongs to a past age, even coarser than that of the 
Kit-kat. He is Charles Sackville,* famous as a companion of 
the merriest and most disreputable of the Stuarts, famous — or, 
rather, infamous — for his mistress, Nell Gwynn, famous for his 
verses, for his patronage of poets, and for his wild frolics in 
early life, when Lord Buckhurst. Rochester called him 

"The best good man with the worst-natured muse ;" 
and Pope says he was 

' ' The scourge of pride, though sanctified or great, 
Of fops in learning and of knaves in state ;" 

Our sailors still sing the ballad which he is said to have writ- 
ten on the eve of the naval engagement between the Duke of 
York and Admiral Opdam, which begins — 

" To all you ladies now on land 
We men at sea indite." 

With a fine classical taste and a courageous spirit, he had 
in early days been guilty of as much iniquity as any of Charles's 
profligate court. He was one of a band of young libertines 
who robbed and murdered a poor tanner on the high-road, and 
were acquitted, less "on account of the poor excuse they dished 
up for this act than of their rank and fashion. Such fine 
gentlemen could not be hanged for the sake of a mere work- 
man in those clays — no ! no ! Yet he does not seem to have 
repented of this transaction, for soon after he was engaged 
with Sedley and Ogle in a series of most indecent acts at the 
Cock Tavern in Bow Street, where Sedley, in " birthday at- 
tii'e," made a blasphemous oration from the balcony of the 
house. In later years he was the pride of the poets: Dryden 
and Prior, Wycherley, Hudibras, and Rymer, were all encour- 
aged by him, and repaid him with praises. Pope and Dr. 
King were no less bountiful in their eulogies of the Maecenas. 
His conversation was so much appreciated that gloomy Wil- 
liam III. chose him as his companion, as merry Charles had 
done before. The famous Irish ballad, which my Uncle Toby 
was always humming, " Lillibullero bullen-a-lah," but which 
Percy attributes to the Marquis of Wharton, another mem- 
ber of the Kit-kat, was said to have been written by Buck- 
hurst. He retained his wit to the last ; and Congreve, who 
visited him when he was dying, said, " Faith, he stutters more 
* For some notice of Lord Dorset, see p. 72. 



LESS CELEBRATED WITS. 107 

wit than other people have in their best health." He died at 
Bath in 1 706. 

Buckhnrst does not complete the list of conspicuous mem- 
bers of this club, but the remainder were less celebrated for 
their wit. There was the Duke of Kingston, the father of 
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu ; Granville, who imitated Wal- 
ler, and attempted to make his "Myra" as celebrated as the 
court-poet's Saccharissa, who, by the way, was the mother of 
the Earl of Sunderland ; the Duke of Devonshire, Avhom Wal- 
pole calls " a patriot among the men, a gallant among the la- 
dies," and who founded Chatsworth ; and other noblemen, 
chiefly belonging to the latter part of the seventeenth century, 
and all devoted to William III., though they had been bred at 
the courts of Charles and James. 

With such an array of wits, poets, statesmen, and gallants, 
it can easily be believed that to be the toast of the Kit-kat was 
no slight honor ; to be a member of it a still greater one ; and 
to be one of its most distinguished, as Congreve was, the 
greatest. Let us now see what title this conceited beau and 
poet had to that position. 



WILLIAM CONGREVE. 

Wheist " Queen Sarah" of Marlborough read the silly epi- 
taph which Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough, had written 
and had engraved on the monument she set up to Congreve, 
she said, with one of the true Blenheim sneers, " I know not 
what happiness she might have in his company, but I am sure 
it was no honor" alluding to her daughter's eulogistic phrases. 

Queen Sarah was right, as she often w T as when condemna- 
tion was called for; and however amusing a companion the 
dramatist may have been, he was not a man to respect, for he 
had not only the common vices of his age, but added to them 
a foppish vanity, toadyism, and fine-gentlemanism (to coin a 
most necessary word), which we scarcely expect to meet with 
in a man who sets up for a satirist. 

It is the fate of greatness to have falsehoods told of it, and 
of nothing in connection w T ith it more so than of its origin. 
If the converse be true, Congreve ought to have been a great 
man, for the place and time of his birth are both subjects of 
dispute. Oh, happy Gilford ! or happy Croker ! why did you 
not — perhaps you did — go to work to set the world right on 
this matter — you, to whom a date discovered is the highest 
palm (no pun intended, I assure you) of glory, and who would 
rather Shakspeare had never written " Hamlet," or Homer the 
" Iliad," than that some miserable little forgotten scrap which 
decided a year or a place should have been consigned to flames 
before it fell into your hands ? Why did you not bring the 
thunder of your abuse and the pop-gunnery of your satire to 
bear upon the question, " How, when, and w T here was William 
Congreve born ?" 

It w r as Lady Morgan, I think, who first " saw the light" 
(that is, if she was born in the daytime) in the Irish Channel. 
If it had been only some one more celebrated, we should have 
had by this time a series of philosophical, geographical, and 
ethnological pamphlets to prove that she was English or Irish, 
according to the fancies or prejudices of the writers. It was 
certainly a very Irish thing to do, which is one argument for 
the Milesians, and again it was done in the Irish Channel, 
which is another and a stronger one; and altogether we are 
not inclined to go into forty-five pages of recondite facts and 
fine-drawn arguments, mingled with the most vehement abuse 



110 WHEN AND WHERE CONGEEVE WAS BORN. 

of any body who ever before wrote on the subject, to prove 
that this country had the honor of producing her ladyship — 
the Wild Irish Girl. We freely give her up to the sister isl- 
and. But not so William Congreve, though we are equally 
indifferent to the honor in his case. 

The one party, then, assert that he was born in this country, 
the other that he breathed his first air in the Emerald Isle. 
Whichever be the true state of the case, we, as Englishmen, 
prefer to agree in the commonly received opinion that he came 
into this wicked world at the village of Bardsea or Bardsey, 
not far from Leeds in the county of York. Let the Bardsey- 
ans immediately erect a statue to his honor, if they have been 
remiss enough to neglect him heretofore. 

But our difficulties are not ended, for there is a similar 
doubt about the year of his birth. His earliest biographer as- 
sures us he was born in 1672, and others that he was baptized 
three years before, in 1669. Such a proceeding might well be 
taken as proof of his Hibernian extraction, and accordingly we 
find Malone supporting the earlier date, producing, of course, 
a certificate of baptism to support himself; and as we have a 
very great respect for his authority, we beg also to support 
Mr. Malone. 

This being settled, we have to examine who were his par- 
ents ; and this is satisfactorily answered by his earliest biog- 
rapher, who informs us that he was of a very ancient family, 
being " the only surviving son of William Congreve, Esq. (who 
was second son to Richard Congreve, Esq., of Congreve and 
Stretton in that county)," to wit, Yorkshire. Congreve pcre 
held a military command, which took him to Ireland soon after 
the dramatist's birth, and thus young William had the incom- 
parable advantage of being educated at Kilkenny, and after- 
ward at Trinity, Dublin, the " silent sister," as it is commonly 
called at our universities. 

At the age of nineteen, this youth sought the classic shades 
of the Middle Temple, of which he was entered a student, but 
by the honorable society of which he was never called to the 
bar ; but whether this was from a disinclination to study 
" Coke upon Lyttelton," or from an incapacity to digest the 
requisite number of dinners, the devouring of which qualify a 
young gentleman to address an enlightened British jury, we 
have no authority for deciding. He was certainly not the 
first, nor the last, young Templar who has quitted special 
pleading on a crusade to the heights of Parnassus, and he be- 
gan early to try the nib of his pen and the color of his ink in 
a novel. Eheu! how many a novel has issued from the dull, 
dirty chambers of that same Temple ! The waters of the 



CONGREVE FINDS HIS VOCATION. Ill 

Thames just there seem to have been augmented by a mingled 
flow of sewage and Helicon, though the former is undoubtedly 
in the greater proportion. This novel, called " Incognita ; or 
Love and Duty Reconciled," seems to have been — for I con- 
fess that I have not read more than a chapter of it, and hope 
I never may be forced to do so — great rubbish, with good 
store of villains and ruffians, love-sick maidens who tune their 
lutes — always conveniently at hand — and love-sick gallants 
who run their foes through the body with the greatest imag- 
inable ease. It was, in fact, such a novel as James might have 
written, had he lived a century and a half ago. It brought its 
author but little fame, and accordingly he turned his attention 
to another branch of literature, and in 1693 produced "The 
Old Bachelor," a play of which Dryden, his friend, had so high 
an opinion that he called it the "best first-play he had ever 
read." However, before being put on the stage it was sub- 
mitted to Dryden, and by him and others prepared for repre- 
sentation, so that it was well fathered. It was successful 
enough, and Congreve thus found his vocation. In his dedi- 
cation — a regular piece of flummery of those days, for which 
authors were often w r ell paid, either in cash or interest — he ac- 
knowledges a debt of gratitude to Lord Halifax, who apjtears 
to have taken the young man by the hand. 

The young Templar could do nothing better now than write 
another play. Play-making was as fashionnble an amusement 
in those days of Old Drury, the only patented theatre then, as 
novel-writing is in 1860; and when the young ensign, Vau- 
brugh, could write comedies and take the direction of a thea- 
tre, it was no derogation to the dignity of the Staffordshire 
squire's grandson to do as much. Accordingly, in the follow- 
ing year he brought out a better comedy, " The Double Deal- 
er," with a prologue which was spoken by the famous Anne 
Bracegirdle. She must have been eighty years old when Hor- 
ace Walpole wrote of her to that other Horace — Mann : " Tell 
Mr. Chute that his friend Bracegirdle breakfasted with me 
this morning. As she went out and wanted her clogs, she 
turned to me and said : ' I remember at the playhouse they 
used to call, Mrs. Oldfield's chair ! Mrs. Barry's clogs ! and Mrs. 
Bracegirdle's pattens !' " These three ladies were all buried 
in Westminster Abbey, and, except Mrs. Cibber, the most beau- 
tiful and most sinful of them all — though they were none of 
them spotless — are the only actresses whose ashes and memo- 
ries are hallowed by the place, for we can scarcely say that 
they do it much honor. 

The success of " The Double Dealer" was at first moderate, 
although that highly respectable woman, Queen Mary, honor- 



112 VERSES TO QUEEN MARY. 

ed it with her august presence, which forthwith called up 
verses of the old adulatory style, though with less point and 
neatness than those addressed to the Virgin Queen : 

" Wit is again the care of majesty," 

said the poet, and 

"Thus flourished wit in our forefathers' age, 
And thus the Roman and Athenian stage. 
Whose wit is best, we'll not presume to tell, 
But this we know, our audience will excell ; 
For never was in Rome, nor Athens seen 
So fair a circle, and so bright a queen." 

But this was not enough, for when Her Majesty departed for 
another realm in the same year, Congreve put her into a high- 
ly eulogistic pastoral, under the name of Pastora, and made 
some compliments on her, which were considered the finest 
strokes of poetry and flattery combined, that an age of ad- 
dresses and eulogies could produce. 

"As lofty pines o'ertop the lowly steed, 
So did her graceful height all nymphs exceed. 
To which excelling height she bore a mind 
Humble as osiers, bending to the wind. 

I mourn Pastora dead ; let Albion mourn, 
And sable clouds her chalkie cliffs adorn." 

This play was dedicated to Lord Halifax, of whom we have 
spoken, and who continued to be Congreve's patron. 

The fame of the young man was now made ; but in the fol- 
lowing year it was destined to shine out more brilliantly still. 
Old Betterton — one of the best Hamlets that ever trod the 
stage, and of whom Booth declared that when he was playing 
the Ghost to his Hamlet, his look of surprise and horror was 
so natural, that Booth could not for some minutes recover 
himself — was now a veteran in his sixtieth year. For forty 
years he had walked the boards and made a fortune for the 
patentees of Drury. It was very shabby of them, therefore, to 
give some of his best parts to younger actors. Betterton was 
disgusted, and determined to set up for himself, to which end 
he managed to procure another patent, turned the Queen's 
Court in Portugal Row, Lincoln's Inn, into a theatre, and 
opened it on the 30th of April, 1695. The building had been 
before used as a theatre in the days of the Merry Monarch, 
and Tom Killegrew had acted here some twenty years before ; 
but it had again become a " tennis-quatre of the lesser sort," 
says Cibber, and the new theatre was not very grand in fabric. 
But Betterton drew to it all the best actors and actresses of 
his former company ; and Mrs. Barry and Mrs. Bracegirdle re- 



CONGREVE ABANDONS THE DRAMA. 113 

mained true to the old man. Congreve, to his honor, espoused 
the same cause, and the theatre opened with his play of "Love 
for Love," which was more successful than either of the for- 
mer. The veteran himself spoke the prologue, and fair Brace- 
girdle the epilogue, in which the poet thus alluded to their 
change of stage : 

"And thus our audience, which did once resort 
To shining theatres to see our sport, 
Now find us tost into a tennis-court. 
Thus from the past, we hope for future grace : 
I beg it — 
And some here know I have a begging face." 

The king himself completed the success of the opening by at- 
tending it, and the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields might have 
ruined the older house, if it had not been for the rapidity with 
which Vanbrngh and Cibber, who wrote for Old Drury, man- 
aged to concoct their pieces ; while Congreve was a slower, 
though perhaps better, writer. " Love for Love" was here- 
after a favorite of Betterton's, and when in 1 709, a year before 
his death, the company gave the old man — then in ill health, 
poor circumstances, and bad spirits — a benefit, he chose this 
play, and himself, though more than seventy, acted the part 
of Valentine, supported by Mrs. Bracegirdle as Angelina, and 
Mrs. Barry as Frail. 

The young dramatist, with all his success, was not satisfied 
with his fame, and resolved to show the world that he had as 
much poetry as wit in him. This he failed to do ; and, like 
better writers, injured his own fame, by not being contented 
with what he had. Congreve — the wit, the dandy, the man 
about town — took it into his head to write a tragedy. In 
1697 "The Mourning Bride" was acted at the Tennis Court 
Theatre. The author was wise enough to return to his former 
muse, and some time after produced his best piece, so some 
think, " The Way of the World," which was also performed 
by Betterton's company ; but, alas ! for overwriting — that ca- 
coethes of imprudent men — it was almost hissed ofi" the stage. 
Whether this was owing to a weariness of Congreve's style, 
or whether at the time of its first appearance Collier's attacks, 
of which anon, had already disgusted the public with the ob- 
scenity and immorality of this writer, I do not know ; but, 
whatever the cause, the consequence was that Mr. William 
Congreve, in a fit of pique, made up his mind never to write 
another piece for the stage — a wise resolution, perhaps — and 
to turn fine gentleman instead. With the exception of com- 
posing a masque called the " Judgment of Paris," and an op- 
era, " Gemele," which was never performed, he kept this reso- 



114 JEREMY COLLIER. 

lution very honestly; and so Mr. William Congreve's career 
as a playwright ends at the early age of thirty. 

But though he abandoned the drama, he was not allowed to 
retire in peace. There was a certain worthy, but peppery lit- 
tle man, who, though a Jacobite and a clergyman, was stanch 
and true, and as superior in character — even, indeed, in vigor 
of writing — to Congreve, as Soniers was to every man of his 
age. This was Jeremy Collier, to whom we owe it that there 
is any English drama fit to be acted before our sisters and 
wives in the present day. Jeremy, the peppery, purged the 
stage in a succession of Jeremiads. 

Born in 1650, educated at Cambridge as a poor scholar, or- 
dained at the age of twenty-six, presented three years later 
with the living of Ampton, near Bury St. Edmunds, Jeremy 
had two qualities to recommend him to Englishmen — respect- 
ability and pluck. In an age when the clergy were as bad as 
the blackest sheep in their flocks, Jeremy was distinguished by 
purity of life ; in an age when the only safety lay in adopting 
the principles of the Vicar of Bray, Jeremy was a Nonjuror, 
and of this nothing could cure him. The Revolution of 1688 
was scarcely effected, when the fiery little partisan published 
a pamphlet, which was rewarded by a residence of some 
months in Newgate, not in the capacity of chaplain. But he 
was scarcely let out, when again went his furious pen, and for 
four years he continued to assail the new government, till his 
hands were shackled and his mouth closed in the prison of 
" The Gate-house." Now, see the character of the man. He 
was liberated upon giving bail, but had no sooner reflected on 
this liberation than he came to the conclusion that it was 
wrong, by offering security, to recognize the authority of mag- 
istrates appointed by a usurper, as he held William to be, and 
voluntarily surrendered himself to his judges. Of course he 
was again committed, but this time to the King's Bench, and 
would doubtless in a few years have made the tour of the 
London prisons, if his enemies had not got tired of trying 
him. Once more at liberty, he passed the next three years in 
retirement. 

After 1693, Jeremy Collier's name was not brought before 
the public till 1696, when he publicly absolved Sir John Friend 
and Sir William Perkins, at their execution, for being concern- 
ed in a plot to assassinate King William. His " Essays on 
Moral Subjects" were published in 1697; 2d vol., 1705; 3d 
vol., 1709. But the only way to put out a firebrand like this 
is to let it alone, and Jeremy, being no longer persecuted, be- 
gan, at last, to think the game was grown stupid, and gave it 
up. He was a well-meaning man, however, and as long as he 
had the luxury of a grievance, would injure no one. 



THE IMMORALITY OF THE STAGE. 115 

He found one now in the immorality of his age, and if he had 
left politics to themselves from the first, he might have done 
much more good than he did. Against the vices of a court 
and courtly circles it was useless to start a crusade single- 
handed ; but his quaint clever pen might yet dress out a pow- 
erful Jeremiad against those who encouraged the licentious- 
ness of the people. Jeremy was no Puritan, for he was a 
Nonjuror and a Jacobite, and we may, therefore, believe that 
the cause was a good one, when we find him adopting pre- 
cisely the same line as the Puritans had done before him. In 
1698 he published, to the disgust of all Drury and Lincoln's 
Inn, his " Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of 
the English Stage, together with the Sense of Antiquity upon 
this Argument." 

While the King of Naples is supplying his ancieift Venuses 
with gowns, and putting his Marses and Herculeses into pan- 
taloons, there are — such are the varieties of opinion — respect- 
able men in this country who call Paul de Kock the greatest 
moral writer of his age, and who would yet like to see " The 
Relapse," "Love for Love," and the choice specimens of 
Wycherley, Farquhar, and even of Beaumont and Fletcher, 
acted at the Princess's and the Haymarket in the year of 
grace 1860. I am not writing "A Short View" of this or any 
other moral subject; but this I must say — the effect of a sight 
or sound on a human being's silly little passions must of ne- 
cessity be relative. You and I can read "Don Juan," Lewis's 
"Monk," the plays of Congreve, and any or all of the publica- 
tions of Holywell Street, without more than disgust at their 
obscenity and admiration for their beauties. But could we be 
pardoned for putting these works into the hands of " sweet 
seventeen," or making Christmas presents of them to our 
boys ? Ignorance of evil is, to a certain extent, virtue : let 
boys be boys in purity of mind as long as they can : let the 
unrefined " great unwashed" be treated also much in the same 
way as young people. I maintain that to a coarse mind all im- 
proper ideas, however beautifully clothed, suggest only sensual 
thoughts — nay, the very modesty of the garments makes them 
the more insidious — the more dangerous. I would rather give 
my boy John, Massinger, or Beaumont and Fletcher, whose 
very improper things "are called by their proper names," 
than let him dive in the prurient innuendo of these later writ- 
ers. 

But there is no need to argue the question — the public has 
decided it long since, and except in indelicate ballets and oc- 
casional rather French passages in farce, our modern stage is 
free from immorality. Even in Garrick's days, when men were 



116 congreve's writings. 

not much more refined than in those of Queen Anne, it was 
found impossible to put the old drama on the stage without con- 
siderable weeding. Indeed I doubt if even the liberal uphold- 
er of Paul de Kock would call Congreve a moral writer ; but 
I confess I am not a competent judge, for, risum teneatis, my 
critics, I have not read his works since I was a boy, and what 
is more, I have no intention of reading them. I well remem- 
ber getting into my hands a large thick volume, adorned with 
miserable woodcuts, and bearing on its back the title "Wych- 
erley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar." I devoured it at 
first with the same avidity with which one might welcome a 
bottle-imp, who at the hour of one's dullness turned up out of 
the carpet and offered you delights new and old for nothing 
but a tether on your soul ; and with a like horror, boy though 
I was, I recoiled from it when any better moment came. It 
seemed to me, when I read this book, as if life were too rot- 
ten for any belief, a nest of sharpers, adulterers, cut-throats, 
and prostitutes. There was none — as far as I remember — of 
that amiable weakness, of that better sentiment, which in Ben 
Jonson or Massinger reconcile us to human nature. If truth 
be a test of genius, it must be a proof of true j:>oetry, that man 
is not made uglier than he is. Nay, his very ugliness loses its 
intensity and falls upon our diseased tastes, for want of some 
goodness, some purity and honesty to relieve it. I will not say 
that there is none of this in Congreve. I only know that my 
recollection of his plays is like that of a vile nightmare, which 
I would not for any thing have return to me. I have read, 
since, books as bad, perhaps worse in some respects, but I have 
found the redemption here and there. I would no more place 
Shandy in any boy's hands than Congreve and Farquhar; and 
yet I can read Tristram again and again with delight ; for amid 
all that is bad there stand out Trim and Toby, pure specimens 
of the best side of human nature, coming home to us and tell- 
ing us that the world is not all bad. There may be such touch- 
es in " Love for Love," or " The Way of the World" — I know 
not and care not. To my remembrance Congreve is but a hor- 
rible nightmare, and may the fates forbid I should be forced 
to go through his plays again. 

Perhaps, then, Jeremy was not far wrong when he attacked 
these specimens of the drama with an unrelenting Nemesis ; 
but he was not before his age. It was less the obvious coarse- 
ness of these productions with which he found fault than their 
demoralizing tendency in a direction which we should now, per- 
haps, consider innocuous. Certainly the Jeremiad overdid it, 
and like a swift but not straight bowler at cricket, he sent balls 
which no wicket-keeper could stop, and which, therefore, were 



jeeemy's "shokt views." 117 

harmless to the batter. He did not want boldness. He attack- 
ed Dryden, now close upon his grave; Congreve, a young man, 
Vanbrugh, Cibber, Farquhar, and the rest, all alive, all in the 
zenith of their fame, and all as popular as writers could be. It 
was as much as if a man should stand up to-day and denounce 
Dickens and Thackeray, with the exception that well-meaning 
people went along with Jeremy, whereas very few would do 
more than smile at the zeal of any one who tilted against our 
modern pets. Jeremy, no doubt, was bold, but he wanted tact, 
and so gave his enemy occasion to blaspheme. He made out 
cases where there were none, and let alone what we moderns 
should denounce. So Congreve took up the cudgels against 
him with much wit and much coarseness, and the two fought 
out the battle in many a pamphlet and many a letter. But Jer- 
emy was not to be beat. His " Short View" was followed by 
" A Defense of the Short View," a " Second Defense of the 
Short View," "A Farther Short View," and, in short, a num- 
ber of " Short Views," which had been better merged into one 
" Long Sight." Jeremy grew coarse and bitter ; Congreve 
coarser and bitterer ; and the whole controversy made a pret- 
ty chapter for the " Quarrels of Authors." But the Jeremiad 
triumphed in the long run, because, if its method was bad, its 
cause was good, and a succeeding generation voted Congreve 
immoral. Enough of Jeremy. We owe him a tribute for his 
pluck, and though no one reads him in the present day, we may 
be thankful to him for having led the way to a better state of 
things.* 

Congreve defended himself in eight letters addressed to Mr. 
Moyle, and we can only say of them, that, if any thing, they are 
yet coarser than the plays he would excuse. 

The works of the young Templar, and his connection with 
Betterton, introduced him to all the writers and wits of his 
day. He and Vanbrugh, though rivals, were fellow-workers, 
and our glorious Haymarket Theatre, which has gone on at 
times when Drury and Covent Garden have been in despair, 
owes its origin to their confederacy. But Vanbrugh's theatre 
was on the site of the present Opera House, and the Haymar- 
ket was set up as a rival concern. Vanbrugh's was built in 
1705, and met the usual fate of theatres, being burnt down 
some eighty-four years after. It is curious enough that this 
house, destined for the "legitimate drama" — often a very ille- 
gitimate performance — was opened by an opera set to Italian 
music, so that "Her Majesty's" has not much departed from 
the original cast of the place. 

* Dryden, in the Preface to his Fables, acknowledged that Collier " had, 
in many points, taxed him justly." 



118 DRYIXEN S FUNERAL. 

Perhaps Congreve's best friend was Dryden. This man's 
life and death are pretty well known, and even his funeral has 
been described time and again. But Corinna — as she was 
styled — gave of the latter an account which has been called 
romantic, and much discredited. There is a deal of character- 
istic humor in her story of the funeral, and as it has long been 
lost sight of, it may not be unpalatable here : Dryden died on 
May-day, 1701, and Lord Halifax* undertook to give his body 
a private funeral in Westminster Abbey. 

"On the Saturday following," writes Corinna, "the Company 
came. The Corps was put into a Velvet Hearse, and eighteen 
Mourning Coaches filled with Company attending. When, 
just before they began to move, Lord Jeffrey s,f with some of 
his rakish Companions, coming by, in Wine, ask'd whose 
Funeral ? And being told : ' What !' cries he, ' shall Dryden, 
the greatest Honour and Ornament of the Nation, be buried 
after this private Manner ? No, Gentlemen ! let all that lov'd 
Mr. Dryden, and honour his Memory, alight, and join with me 
in gaining my Lady's Consent, to let me have the Honour of 
his Interment, which shall be after another manner than this, 
and I will bestow £1000 on a Monument in the Abbey for 
him.' The Gentlemen in the Coaches, not knowing of the 
Bishop of Rochester's Favour, nor of Lord Halifax's generous 
Design (these two noble Spirits having, out of Respect to the 
Family, enjoin' d Lady Elsabeth and her Son to keep their Fa- 
vour concealed to the World, and let it pass for her own Ex- 
pense), readily came out of the Coaches, and attended Lord 
Jeffreys up to the Lady's Bed-side, who was then sick. He re- 
peated the Purport of what he had before said, but she absolute- 
ly refusing, he fell on his knees, vowing never to rise till his Re- 
quest was granted. The rest of the Company, by his Desire, 
kneeled also ; she being naturally of a timorous Disposition, 
and then under a sudden suiprise, fainted away. As soon as 
she recover'd her speech, she cry'd, 'No, no!' 'Enough, 
gentlemen,' replied he (rising briskly), 'My Lady is very good, 
she says, Go, go !' She repeated her former Words with all 
her Strength, but alas in vain ! her feeble Voice was lost in 
their Acclamations of Joy! and Lord Jeffreys order'd the 
Hearsemen to carry the Corps to Russell's, an undertaker in 
Cheapside, and leave it there, till he sent orders for the Em- 
balment, which, he added, should be after the Royal Manner. 
His directions were obey'd, the Company dispersed, and Lady 
Elsabeth and Mr. Charles remained Inconsolable. Next Morn- 

* Charles Montagu, Earl of Halifax. Lord Halifax was born in 1661, 
and died in 1715. He was called "Mouse Montagu." 

t Son of Judge Jeffries : satirized by Pope under the name of " Bufo." 



A TUB-PREACHEE. 119 

ing Mr. Charles waited on Lord Halifax, etc., to excuse liis 
Mother and self, by relating the real Truth. But neither his 
Lordship nor the Bishop would admit of any Plea ; especially 
the latter, who had the Abbey lighted, the ground open'd, the 
Choir attending, an Anthem ready set, and himself waiting for 
some Hours without any Corps to bury. Russell, after three 
Days' Expectance of Orders for Embahnent, without receiving 
any, waits on Lord Jeffreys, who, pretending Ignorance of the 
Matter, turn'd it off with an ill-natured Jest, saying, ' Those 
who observed the orders of a drunken Frolick, deserved no 
better ; that he remembered nothing at all of it, and he might 
do what he pleased with the Corps.' On this Mr. Russell 
waits on Lady Elsabeth and Mr. Dryden ; but alas ! it was 
not in their power to answer. The season was very hot, the 
Deceas'd had liv'd high and fast ; and being corpulent, and 
abounding with gross Humours, grew very offensive. The Un- 
dertaker, in short, threaten'd to bring home the Corps, and 
set it before the Door. It can not be easily imagin'd what 
grief, shame, and confusion seized this unhappy Family. They 
begged a Day's Respite, which was granted. Mr. Charles 
wrote a very handsome Letter to Lord Jeffreys, who returned 
it with this cool Answer, 'He knew nothing of the Matter, 
and would be troubled no more about it.' He then addressed 
the Lord Halifax and Bishop of Rochester, who were both too 
justly tho' unhappily incensed, to do anything in it. In this 
extreme distress, Dr. Garth, a man who entirely lov'd Mr. 
Dryden, and was withal a Man of Generosity and great Hu- 
manity, sends for the Corps to the College of Physicians in 
Warwick Lane, and proposed a Funeral by subscription, to 
which himself set a most noble example. Mr. Wycherley, 
and several others, among whom must not be forgotten Henry 
Cromwell, Esq., Captain Gibbons, and Mr. Christopher Met- 
calfe, Mr. Dryden's Apothecary and intimate Friend (since a 
Collegiate Physician), w 7 ho with many others contributed most 
largely to the Subscription ; and at last a Day, about three 
Weeks after his Decease, was appointed for the Interment at 
the Abbey. Dr. Garth pronounced a fine Latin Oration over 
the Corps at the College ; but the audience being numerous, 
and the Room large, it was requisite the Orator should be ele- 
vated, that he might be heard. But as it unluckily happen'd 
there was nothing at hand but an old Beer-Barrel, which the 
Doctor with much good-nature mounted ; and in the midst of 
his Oration, beating Time to the Accent with his Foot, the 
Head broke in, and his Feet sunk to the Bottom, which oc- 
casioned the malicious Report of his Enemies, ' That he was 
turned a Tub-Preacher.' However, he finished the Oration 



120 HOROSCOPIC PREDICTIONS. 

with a superior grace and genius, to the loud Acclamations of 
Mirth, which inspir'd the mix'd or rather Mob-Auditors. The 
Procession began to move, a numerous Train of Coaches at- 
tended the Hearse: But, good God! in what Disorder can 
only be express'd by a Sixpenny Pamphlejt, soon after publish'd, 
entitled ' Dryden's Funeral.' At last the Corps arrived at the 
Abbey, which was all unlighted. No Organ played, no An- 
them sung; only two of the Singing boys preceded the Corps, 
who sung an Ode of Horace, with each a small candle in their 
Hand. The Butchers and other Mob broke in like a Deluge, 
so that only about eight or ten Gentlemen could gain Admis- 
sion, and those forced to cut the Way with their drawn 
Swords. The Coffin in this Disorder was let down into Chau- 
cer's Grave, with as much Confusion, and as little Ceremony, 
as was possible ; every one glad to save themselves from the 
Gentlemen's Swords, or the Clubs of the Mob. When the 
Funeral was over, Mr. Charles sent a Challenge to Lord Jef- 
freys, who refusing to answer it, he sent several others, and 
went often himself, but could neither get a letter deliver'd, 
nor Admittance to speak to him, that he resolved, since his 
Lordship refused to answer him like a gentleman, he would 
watch an Opportunity to meet him, and fight off hand, tho' 
with all the Rules of Honor ; which his Lordship hearing, left 
the Town, and Mr. Charles could never have the satisfaction 
to meet him, tho' he sought it till his Death with the utmost 
Application." 

Dryden was, perhaps, the last man of learning that believed 
in astrology; though an eminent English author, now living, 
and celebrated for the variety of his acquirements, has been 
known to procure the casting of horoscopes, and to consult 
a noted " astrologer," who gives opinions for a small sum. 
The coincidences of prophecy are not more remarkable than 
those of star-telling ; and Dryden and the author I have refer- 
red to were probably both captivated into belief by some for- 
tuitous realization of their horoscopic predictions. Nor can 
we altogether blame their credulity, when we see biology, 
table-turning, rapping, and all the family of impostures, taken 
up seriously in our own time. 

On the birth of his son Charles, Dryden immediately cast 
his horoscope. The following account of Dryden's paternal 
solicitude for his son, and its result, may be taken as embel- 
lished, if not apocryphal. Evil hour, indeed — Jupiter, Venus, 
and the Sun were " all under the earth ;" Mars and Saturn 
were in square : eight, or a multiple of it, would be fatal to 
the child — the square foretold it. In his eighth, his twenty- 
third, or his thirty-second year, he was certain to die, though 



CONGBEVES AMBITION. 121 

he might possibly linger on to the age of thirty-four. The 
stars did all they could to keep up their reputation. When 
the boy was eight years old he nearly lost his life by being 
buried under a heap of stones out of an old wall, knocked 
down by a stag and hounds in a hunt. But the stars were 
not to be beaten ; and though the child recovered, went in for 
the game a second time in his twenty-third year, when he fell, 
in a lit of giddiness, from a tower, and, to use Lady Elsabeth's 
words, was " mash'd to a mummy." Still the battle was not 
over, and the mummy returned in due course to its human 
form, though considerably disfigured. Mars and Saturn were 
naturally disgusted at his recovery, and resolved to finish the 
disobedient youth. As we have seen, he in vain sought his 
fate at the hand of Jc. Treys; but we must conclude that the 
offended constellation? look Neptune in jiartnership, for in due 
course the youth met with a watery grave. 

After abandoning the drama, Congreve appears to have 
come out in the light of an independent gentleman. He was 
already sufficiently introduced into literary society; Pope, 
Steele, Swift, and Addison were not only his friends but his 
admirers, and we can well believe that their admiration was 
considerable, when we rind the one dedicating his " Miscella- 
ny," the other his translation of the " Iliad," to a man who 
was qualified neither by rank nor fortune to play Maecenas. 

At what time he was admitted to the Kit-kat I am not in 
a position to state, but it must have been after 1715, and by 
that time he was a middle-aged man, his fame was long since 
achieved ; and whatever might be thought of his works and 
his controversy with Collier, he was recognized as one of the 
literary stars at a period when the great courted the clever, 
and wit was a passport to any society. Congreve had plenty 
of that, and probably at the Kit-kat was the life of the party 
when Vanbrugh was away or Addison in a graver mood. Un- 
troubled by conscience, he could launch out on any subject 
whatever ; and his early life, spent in that species of so-called 
gayety which was then the routine of every young man of the 
world, gave him ample experience to draw upon. But Con- 
greve's ambition was greater than his talents. No man so 
little knew his real value, or so grossly asserted one which he 
had not. Gay, handsome, and in good circumstances, he as- 
pired to be, not Congreve the poet, not Congreve the wit^ not 
Congreve the man of mind, but simply Congreve the fine gen- 
tleman. Such humility would be charming if it were not ab- 
surd. It is a vice of scribes to seek a character for which they 
have little claim. Johnson was as proud or prouder of his 
hunting than he was of his dictionary ; Moore loved to be 

F 



122 ANECDOTE OP VOLTAIRE AND CONGREVE. 

thought a diner-out rather than a poet ; even Byron affected 
the fast man when he might have been content with the name 
of " genius ;" but Congreve went farther, and was ashamed of 
being poet, dramatist, genius, or what you will. An anecdote 
of him, told by Voltaire, who may have been an " awfu' liar," 
but had no temptation to invent in such a case as this, is so 
consistent with what we gather of the man's character, that 
one can not but think it is true. 

The philosopher of Ferney was anxious to see and converse 
with a brother dramatist of such celebrity as the author of 
" The Way of the World." Pie expected to find a man of a 
keen satirical mind, who would join him in a laugh against hu- 
manity. He visited Congreve, and naturally began to talk of 
his works. The fine gentleman spoke of them as trifles utterly 
beneath his notice, and told him, with an affectation which 
perhaps was sincere, that he wished to be visited as a gentle- 
man, not as an author. One can imagine the disgust of his 
brother dramatist. Voltaire replied, that had Mr. Congreve 
been nothing more than a gentleman, he should not have taken 
the trouble to call on him, and therewith retired with an ex- 
pression of merited contempt. 

It is only in the present day that authorship is looked upon 
as a profession, though it has long been one. It is amusing to 
listen to the sneers of men who never wrote a book, or who, 
having written, have gained thereby some more valuable ad- 
vantage than the publisher's check. The men who talk with 
horror of writing for money, are glad enough if their works 
introduce them to the notice of the influential, and aid them 
in procuring a place. In the same way, Congreve was not at 
all ashamed of fulsome dedications, which brought him the fa- 
vor of the great. Yet we may ask, if, the laborer being wor- 
thy of his hire, and the labor of the brain being the highest, 
finest, and most exhausting that can be, the man who straight- 
forwardly and without affectation takes guineas from his pub- 
lisher, is not honester than he who counts upon an indirect 
reward for his toil? Fortunately, the question is almost set- 
tled by the example of the first writers of the present day ; 
but there are still people who think that one should sit down 
to a year's — ay ten years'-|4iard mental work, and expect no 
return but fame. Whethe» \\}ch objectors have always pri- 
vate means to return to, of- Aether they have never known 
what it is to write a book, we*do not care to examine, but they 
are to be found in large numbers among the educated ; and. 
indeed, to this present day, it is held by the upper classes to 
be utterly derogatory to write for money. 

Whether this was the feeling in Congreve's day or not is 



THE PROFESSION OF MAECENAS. 123 

not now the question. Those were glorious days for an au- 
thor, who did not mind playing the sycophant a little. In- 
stead of having to trudge from door to door in Paternoster 
Row, humbly requesting an interview, which is not always 
granted — instead of sending that heavy parcel of MS., which 
costs you a fortune for postage, to publisher after publisher, 
till it is so often "returned with thanks" that you hate the 
very sight of it, the young author of those days had a much 
easier and more comfortable part to play. An introduction to 
an influential man in town, who again would introduce you to 
a patron, was all that was necessary. The profession of Mae- 
cenas was then as recognized and established as that of doctor 
or lawyer. A man of money could always buy brains ; and 
most noblemen considered an author to be as necessary a part 
of his establishment as the footmen who ushered them into my 
lord's presence. A fulsome dedication in the largest type was 
all that he asked ; and if a writer were sufficiently profuse in 
his adulation, he might dine at Maecenas's table, drink his sack 
and canary without stint, and apply to him for cash whenever 
he found his pockets empty. Nor was this all : if a writer 
were sufficiently successful in his works to reflect honor on his 
patron, he was eagerly courted by others of the noble profes- 
sion. He was offered, if not hard cash, as good an equivalent, 
in the shape of a comfortable govei*nment sinecure ; and if this 
was not to be had, he was sometimes even lodged and boarded 
by his obliged dedicatee. In this way he was introduced into 
the highest society ; and if he had wit enough to supjjort the 
character, he soon found himself facile princeps in a circle of 
the highest nobility in the land. Thus it is that in the clubs 
of the day we find title and wealth mingling with wit and 
genius ; and the writer who had begun life by a cringing ded- 
ication, was now rewarded by the devotion and assiduity of 
the men he had once flattered. When Steele, Swift, Addison, 
Pope, and Congreve were the kings of their sets, it was time 
for authors to look and talk big. Eheu ! those' happy days 
are gone ! 

Our dramatist, therefore, soon discovered that a good play 
was the key to a good place, and the Whigs took care that he 
should have it. Oddly enough, when the Tories came in they 
did not turn him out. Perhap they wanted to gain him over 
to themselves ; perhaps, like t 1 /icar of Bray, he did not mind 
turning his coat once or twi' . m a lifetime. However this may 
be, he managed to keej) his appointment without offending his 
own party ; and when the latter returned to power, he even 
induced them to give him a comfortable little sinecure, which 
went by the name of Secretary to the Island of Jamaica, and 
raised the income from his appointments to £1200 a year. 



124 congeeve's peivate life. 

From this period he was little before the public. He could 
afford now to indulge his natural indolence and selfishness. His 
private life was perhaps not worse than that of the majority of 
his contemporaries. He had his intrigues, his mistresses, the 
same love of wine, and the same addiction to gluttony. He 
had the reputation of a wit, and with wits he passed his time, 
sufficiently easy in his circumstances to feel no damping to his 
spirits in the cares of this life. The Island of Jamaica proba- 
bly gave him no further trouble than that of signing a few pa- 
pers from time to time, and giving a receipt for his salary. His 
life, therefore, presents no very remarkable feature, and he is 
henceforth known more on account of his friends than for aught 
he may himself have done. The best of these friends was Wal- 
ter Moyle, the scholar, who translated j:>arts of Lucian and Xen- 
ophon, and was pretty well known as a classic. He was a Corn- 
ish man of independent means, and it was to him that Congreve 
addressed the letters in which he attempted to defend himself 
from the attacks of Collier. 

It was not to be expected that a wit and a poet should go 
through life without a platonic, and accordingly we find our 
man not only attached, but devoted to a lady of great distinc- 
tion. This was no other than Henrietta, Duchess of Marlbor- 
ough, the daughter of " Malbrook" himself, and of the famous 
" Queen Sarah." Henrietta was the eldest daughter, and there 
was no son to inherit the prowess of Churchill and the parsi- 
mony of his wife. The nation — to which, by the way, the Marl- 
boroughs were never grateful — would not allow the title of 
their pet warrior to become extinct, and a special Act of Par- 
liament gave to the eldest daughter the honors of the duchy.* 
The two Duchesses of Marlborough hated each other cordially. 
Sarah's temper was probably the main cause of their bicker- 
ing; but there is never a feud between parent and child in 
which both are not more or less blamable. 

The Duchess Henrietta conceived a violent fancy for the 
wit and poet, and whatever her husband, Lord Godolphin, may 
have thought of it, the connection ripened into a most inti- 
mate friendship, so much so that Congreve made the duchess 
not only his executrix, but the sole residuary legatee of all 
his property .f His will gives us some insight into the toady- 
ing character of the man. Only four near relations are men- 
tioned as legatees, and only £540 is divided among them; 
whereas, after leaving £200 to Mrs. Braccgirdle, the actress ; 
£100, "and all my apparel and linnen of all soi'ts" to a Mrs. 
Rooke, he divides the rest between his friends of the nobil- 

* See Burke's "Peerage." 

t The Duchess of Marlborough received £10,000 by Mr. Congreve's will. 



congreve's death and burial. 125 

ity, Lords Cobham and Shannon, the Duchess of Newcastle, 
Lady Mary Godolphin, Colonel Churchill (who receives "twen- 
ty pounds, together with my gold-headed cane"), and, lastly, 
"to the poor of the parish," the magnificent sum oi ten pounds. 
" Blessed are those who give to the rich ;" these words must 
surely have expressed the sentiment of the worldly Congreve. 

However, Congreve got something in return from the Duch- 
ess Henrietta, which he might not have received from "the poor 
of the parish," to wit, a monument, and an inscription on it writ- 
ten by her own hand. I have already said what " Queen Sa- 
rah" thought of the latter, and, for the rest, those who care to 
read the nonsense on the walls of Westminster Abbey can de- 
cide for themselves as to the honor the poet received from his 
titled friend. 

The latter days of William Congreve Avere passed in wit and 
gout : the wine, which warmed the one probably brought on 
the latter. After a course of ass's milk, which does not seem 
to have done him much good, the ex-dramatist retired to Bath, 
a very fashionable place for departing life in, under easy and 
elegant circumstances. But he not only drank of the springs 
beloved of King Bladud, of apocryphal memory, but even went 
so far as to imbibe the snail-water, which was then the last spe- 
cies of quack cure in vogue. This, probably, dispatched him. 
But it is only just to that disagreeable little reptile that in- 
fests our gardens, and whose slime Avas supposed to possess pe- 
culiarly strengthening properties, to state that his death was 
materially hastened by being overturned when driving in his 
chariot. He was close upon sixty, had long been blind from 
cataracts in his eyes, and as he was no longer either useful or 
ornamental to the world in general, he could perhaps be spared. 
He died soon after this accident in January, 1729. He had the 
sense to die at a time when Westminster Abbey, being regard- 
ed as a mausoleum, was open to receive the corpse of any one 
who had a little distinguished himself, and even of some who 
had no distinction whatever. He was buried there with great 
pomp, and his dear duchess set up his monument. So much 
for his body. What became of the soul of a dissolute, vain, 
witty, and unprincipled man, is no concern of ours. Mequiescat 
inpace, if there is any peace for those who are buried in West- 
minster Abbey. 



BEAU NASH. 

" There is nothing new under the sun," said Walpole, by 
way of a very original remark. " No," whispered George 
Selwyn, " nor under the grandson either." 

Mankind, as a body, has proved its silliness in a thousand 
ways, but in none, perhaps, so ludicrously as in its respect for 
a man's coat. He is not always a fool that knows the value 
of dress ; and some of the wisest and greatest of men have 
been dandies of the first water. King Solomon was one and 
Alexander the Great was another ; but there never was a more 
despotic monarch, nor one more humbly obeyed by his sub- 
jects, than the King of Bath, and he Avon his dominions by 
the cut of his coat. But as Hercules was killed by a dress- 
shirt, so the beaux of the modern world have generally ruin- 
ed themselves by their wardrobes, and brought remorse to 
their hearts, or contempt from the very people who once wor- 
shiped them. The husband of Mrs. Darner, who appeared in 
a new suit twice a day, and whose wardrobe sold for £15,000, 
blew his brains out at a coffee-house. Beau Fielding, Beau 
Nash, and Beau Brummell all expiated their contemptible 
vanity in obscure old age of want and misery. As the world 
is full of folly, the history of a fool is as good a mirror to hold 
up to it as another ; but in the case of Beau Nash the only 
question is, whether he or his subjects were the greater fools. 
So now for a picture of as much folly as could well be cram- 
med into that hot basin in the Somersetshire hills, of "which 
more anon. 

It is a hard thing for a man not to have had a father — hard- 
er still, like poor Savage, to have one whom he can not get hold 
of; but perhaps it is hardest of all, when you have a father, 
and that parent a very respectable man, to be told that you 
never had one. This was Nash's case, and his father was so 
little known, and so seldom mentioned, that the splendid Beau 
was thought almost to have dropped from the clouds, ready 
dressed and powdered. He dropped in reality from any thing 
but a heavenly place — the shipping-town of Swansea : so that 
Wales can claim the honor of having produced the finest beau 
of his age. 

Old Nash was, perhaps, a better gentleman than his son ; 
but with far less pretensions. He was a partner in a glass- 



128 THE KING OF BATH. 

manufactory. The Beau, in after years, often got rallied on 
the inferiority of his origin, and the least obnoxious answer he 
ever made was to Sarah of Marlborough, as rude a creature as 
himself, who told him he was ashamed of his parentage. "No, 
madam," replied the King of Bath, " I seldom mention my fa- 
ther*, in company, not because I have any reason to be ashamed 
of him, but because he has some reason to be ashamed of me." 
Nash, though a fop and a fool, was not a bad-hearted man, as 
we shall see. And if there were no other redeeming point in 
his character, it is a great deal to say for him, that in an age 
of toadyism, he treated rank in the same manner as he did the 
want of it, and did his best to remove the odious distinctions 
which pride would have kept up in his dominions. In fact, 
King Nash may be thanked for having, by his energy in this 
respect, introduced into society the first elements of that mid- 
dle class which is found alone in England. 

Old Nash — whose wife, by the way, was niece to that Col- 
onel Poyer who defended Pembroke Castle in the days of the 
first Revolution — was one of those silly men who want to make 
gentlemen of their sons, rather than good men. He had his 
wish. His son Richard was a very fine gentleman, no doubt ; 
but, unfortunately, the same circumstances that raised him to 
that much-coveted position, also made him a gambler and a 
profligate. Oh! foolish papas, when will you learn that a 
Christian snob is worth ten thousand irreligious gentlemen? 
When will you be content to bring up your boys for heaven 
rather than for the brilliant world ? Nash, senior, sent his 
son first to school and then to Oxford, to be made a gentle- 
man of. Richard was entered at Jesus College, the haunt of 
the Welsh. In my day, this quiet little place was celebrated 
for little more than the humble poverty of its members, one 
third of whom rejoiced in the cognomen of Jones. They were 
not renowned for cleanliness, and it was a standing joke with 
us silly boys, to ask at the door for " that Mr. Jones who had 
a tooth-brush." If the college had the same character then, 
Nash must have astonished its dons, and we are not surprised 
that in his first year they thought it better to get rid of him. 

His father could ill afford to keep him at Oxford, and fond- 
ly hoped he would distinguish himself. " My boy Dick" did 
so at the very outset, by an offer of marriage to one of those 
charming sylphs of that academical city, who are always on 
the look-out for credulous undergraduates. The affair was 
discovered, and Master Richard, who was not seventeen, was 
removed from the University.* Whether he ever, in after 

* Warner ("History of Bath," p. 366) says, "Nash was removed from 
Oxford by his friends." 



OFFER OF KNIGHTHOOD. 129 

life, made another offer, I know not, but there is no doubt that 
lie ought to have been married, and that the connections he 
formed in later years were far more disreputable than his first 
love affairs. 

The worthy glass-manufacturer having failed to make his 
son a gentleman in one way, took the best step to make him 
a blackguard, and, in spite of the wild inclinations he had al- 
ready evinced, bought him a commission in the army. In 
this new position the incipient Beau did every thing but his 
duty ; dressed superbly, but would not be in time for parade ; 
spent more money than he had, but did not obey orders ; and 
finally, though not expelled from the army, he found it con- 
venient to sell his commission, and return home, after spend- 
ing the proceeds. 

Papa was now disgusted, and sent the young Hopeless to 
shift for himself. What could a well-disposed, handsome 
youth do to keep body and, not soul, but clothes together ? 
He had but one talent, and that was for dress. Alas, for our 
degenerate days! When we are pitched upon our own bot- 
toms, we must work; and that is a highly ungentlemanly thing 
to do. But in the beginning of the last century, such a de- 
grading resource was quite unnecessary. There were always 
at hand plenty of establishments where a youth could obtain 
the necessary funds to pay his tailor, if fortune favored him ; 
and if not, he could follow the fashion of the day, and take to 
what the Japanese call " the happy Dispatch." Nash proba- 
bly suspected that he had no brains to blow out, and he de- 
termined the more resolutely to make fortune his mistress. 
He went to the gaming-table, and turned his one guinea into 
ten, and his ten into a hundred, and was soon blazing about in 
gold lace, and a new sword, the very delight of dandies. 

He had entered his name, by way of excuse, at the Temple, 
and we can quite believe that he ate all the requisite dinners, 
though it is not so certain that he paid for them. He soon 
found that a fine coat is not so very far beneath a good brain 
in worldly estimation, and when, on the accession of William 
the Third, the Templars, according to the old custom, gave his 
Majesty a banquet, Nash, as a promising Beau, was selected 
to manage the establishment. It was his first experience of 
the duties of an M. C, and he conducted himself so ably on this 
occasion that the king even offered to make a knight of him. 
Probably Master Richard thought of his empty purse, for he 
replied with some of that assurance which afterward stood him 
in such good stead, "Please your majesty, if you intend to make 
me a knight, I wish I may be one of your poor knights of 
Windsor, and then I shall have a fortune, at least able to sup- 

F 2 



130 nash's generosity. 

port my title." William did not see the force of this argument, 
and Mr. Nash remained Mr. Nash till the day of his death. 
He had another chance of the title, however, in days when he 
could have better maintained it, but again he refused. Queen 
Anne once asked him why he declined knighthood. He re- 
plied : " There is Sir William Read, the mountebank, who has 
just been knighted, and I should have to call him 'brother.' " 
The honor was, in fact, rather a cheap one in those days, and 
who knows whether a man who had done such signal service 
to his country did not look forward to a peerage? Worse 
men than even Beau Nash have had it. 

Well, Nash could aiford to defy royalty, for he was to be 
himself a monarch of all he surveyed, and a good deal more ; 
but before we follow him to Bath, let us give the devil his 
due — which, by the way, he generally gets — and tell a pair 
of tales in the Beau's favor. 

Imprimis, his accounts at the Temple were £10 deficient. 
Now I don't mean that Nash was not as great a liar as most 
of his craft, but the truth of this tale rests on the authority of 
the " Spectator," though Nash took delight in repeating it. 

"Come hither, young man," said the Benchers, coolly: 
" whereunto this deficit ?" 

"Pri' thee, good masters," quoth Nash, "that £10 was spent 
on making a man happy." 

"A man happy, young sir, pri'thee explain." 

" Odds donners," quoth Nash, " the fellow said in my hear- 
ing that his wife and bairns were starving, and £10 would 
make him the happiest man sub sole, and on such an occasion 
as His Majesty's accession could I refuse it him ?" 

Nash was, proverbially, more generous than just. He would 
not pay a debt if he could help it, but w T ould give the very 
amount to the first friend that begged it. There was much 
ostentation in this, but then my friend Nash loas ostentatious. 
One friend bothered him day and night for £20 that was ow- 
ing to him, and he could not get it. Knowing his debtor's 
character, he hit, at last, on a happy expedient, and sent a 
friend to borrow the money "to relieve his urgent necessi- 
ties." Out came the bank-note, before the stoiy of disti'ess 
was finished. The friend carried it to the creditor, and when 
the latter again met Nash, he ought to have made him a pret- 
ty compliment on his honesty. 

Perhaps the King of Bath would not have tolerated in any 
one else the juvenile frolics he delighted in after years to re- 
late of his own early days. When at a loss for cash he would 
do any thing, but work, for a fifty pound note, and having, in 
one of his trips, lost all his money at York, the Beau under- 



DAYS OF FOLLY. 131 

took to " do penance" at the minster door for that sum. He 
accordingly arrayed himself — not in sackcloth and ashes, but 
— in an able-bodied blanket, and nothing else, and took his 
stand at the porch just at the hour when the dean would be 
going in to read service. "He, ho," cried that dignitary, who 
knew him, " Mr. Nash in masquerade ?" " Only a Yorkshire 
penance, Mr. Dean," quoth the reprobate ; " for 'keeping bad 
company, too," pointing therewith to the friends who had 
come to see the sport. 

This might be tolerated, but when, in the eighteenth cen- 
tury, a young man emulates the hardiness of Godiva, without 
her merciful heart, we may not think quite so well of him. 
Mr. Richard Nash, Beau Extraordinary to the Kingdom of 
Bath, once rode through a village in that costume of which 
even our first parent was rather ashamed, and that, too, on 
the back of a cow ! The wager was, I believe, considerable. 
A young Englishman did something more respectable, yet 
quite as extraordinary, at Paris, not a hundred years ago, for 
a small bet. He was one of the stoutest, thickest-built men 
possible, yet being but eighteen, had neither whisker nor mus- 
tache to masculate his clear English complexion. At the Mai- 
son Doree one night he offered to ride in the Champs Elysees 
in a lady's habit, and not be mistaken for a man. A friend 
xmdertook to dress him, and went all over Paris to hire a habit 
that would fit his round figure. It was hopeless for a time, 
but at last a good-sized body was found, and added thereto, 
an ample skirt. Felix dressed his hair with mainte plats and 
a net. He looked perfect, but in coming out of the hairdress- 
er's to get into his fly, unconsciously pulled up his skirt and 
displayed a sturdy pair of well-trowsered legs. A crowd — 
there is always a ready crowd in Paris — was waiting, and the 
laugh Mas general. This hero reached the horse-dealer's — 
"mounted," and rode down the Champs. "A very fine wom- 
an that," said a Frenchman in the promenade, " but what a 
back she has !" It was in the return bet to this that a now 
well-known diplomat drove a goat-chaise and six down the 
same fashionable resort, with a monkey, dressed as a footman, 
in the back seat. The days of folly did not, apparently, end 
with Beau Nash. 

There is a long lacune in the history of this worthy's life, 
which may have been filled up by a residence in a sponging- 
house, or by a temporary appointment as billiard-marker ; but 
the heroic Beau accounted for his disappearance at this time 
in a much more romantic manner. He used to relate that he 
was once asked to dinner on board a man-of-war under orders 
for the Mediterranean, and that such was the affection the of- 



132 A VERY ROMANTIC STORY. 

ficers entertained for him, that, having made him drunk — no 
difficult matter — they weighed anchor, set sail, and carried the 
successor of King Bladud away to the wars. Having gone so 
far, Nash was not the man to neglect an opportunity for im- 
aginary valor. He therefore continued to relate that, in the 
apocryphal vessel, he was once engaged in a yet more apocry- 
phal encounter, and wounded in the leg. This was a little too 
much for the good Bathonians to believe, but Nash silenced 
their doubts. On one occasion, a lady who was present when 
he was telling this story, expressed her incredulity. 

" I protest, madam," cried the Beau, lifting his leg up, " it 
is true, and if I can not be believed, your ladyship may, if 
you please, receive further information, and feel the ball in my 
leg." 

Wherever Nash may have passed the intervening years, 
may be an interesting speculation for a German professor, 
but is of little moment to us. We find him again, at the age 
of thirty, taking first steps toward the complete subjugation 
of the kingdom he afterward ruled. 

There is, among the hills of Somersetshire, a huge basin form- 
ed by the river Avon, and conveniently supplied with a nat- 
ural gush of hot water, which can be turned on at any time 
for the cleansing of diseased bodies. This hollow presents 
many curious anomalies : though sought for centuries for the 
sake of health, it is one of the most unhealthily-situated places 
in the kingdom; here the body and the pocket are alike clean- 
ed out, but the spot itself has been noted for its dirtiness since 
the days of King Bladud's wise pigs; here, again, the diseased 
flesh used to be healed, but the healthy soul within it speedily 
besickened ; you came to cure gout and rheumatism, and caught 
in exchange dice-fever. 

The mention of those pigs reminds me that it would be a 
shameful omission to speak of this city without giving the sto- 
ry of that apocryphal British monarch, King Bladud. But let 
me be the one exception ; let me respect the good sense of the 
reader, and not insult him by supposing him capable of believ- 
ing a mythic jumble of kings, and pigs, and dirty marshes, 
which he will, if he cares to, find at full length in any " Bath 
Guide" — price sixpence. 

But whatever be the case with respect to the Celtic sover- 
eign, there is, I presume, no doubt, that the Romans were here, 
and probably the centurions and tribunes cast the alea in some 
pristine assembly-room, or wagged their plumes in some well- 
built Pump-room, with as much spirit of fashion as the full- 
bottomed-wigged exquisites in the reign of King Nash. At 
any rate Bath has been in almost every age a common centre 



NASH DESCENDS UPON BATH. 133 

for health-seekers and gamesters — two antipodal races who al- 
ways flock together — and if it has from time to time declined, 
it has only been for a period. Saxon churls and Norman lords 
were too sturdy to catch much rheumatic gout : crusaders had 
better things to think of than their imaginary ailments ; good 
health was in fashion under Plantagenets and Tudors ; doctors 
were not believed in ; even empirics had to praise their wares 
with much wit, and Morrison himself must have mounted a 
bank and dressed in Astleyian costume in order to find a cus- 
tomer ; sack and small-beer were harmless, when homes were 
not comfortable enough to keep earl or churl by the fireside, 
and " out-of-doors" was the proper drawing-room for a man : 
in short, sickness came in with civilization, indisposition with 
immoral habits, fevers with fine-gentlemanliness, gout with 
greediness, and valetudinarianism — there is no Anglo-Saxon 
word for that — with what we falsely call refinement. So, 
whatever Bath may have been to pampered Romans, who 
over-ate themselves, it had little importance to the stout, 
healthy Middle Ages, and it was not till the reign of Charles 
II. that it began to look up. Doctors and touters — the two 
were often one in those days — thronged there, and fools were 
found in plenty to follow them. At last the blessed counte- 
nance of portly Anne smiled on the pig-styes of King Bladud. 
In 1703 she went to Bath, and from that time "people of dis- 
tinction" flocked there. The assemblage was not perhaps very 
brilliant or very refined. The visitors danced on the green, 
and played privately at hazard. A few sharpers found their 
way down from London ; and at last the Duke of Beaufort in- 
stituted an M. C. in the person of Captain Webster — Nash's 
predecessor — whose main act of glory was in setting up gam- 
bling as a public amusement. It remained for Nash to make 
the place what it afterward was, when Chesterfield could 
lounge in the Pump-room and take snuff with the Beau ; when 
Sarah of Marlborough, Lord and Lady Hervey, the Duke of 
Wharton, Congreve, and all the little-great of the day thronged 
thither rather to kill time with less ceremony than in London, 
than to cure complaints more or less imaginary. 

The doctors were only less numerous than the sharpers ; the 
place was still uncivilized ; the company smoked and lounged 
without etiquette, and played without honor ; the place itself 
lacked all comfort, all elegance, and all cleanliness. 

Upon this delightful place, the avatar of the God of Eti- 
quette, personified in Mr. Richard Nash, descended somewhere 
about the year 1705, for the purpose of regenerating the bar- 
barians. He alighted just at the moment that one of the doc- 
tors we have alluded to, in a fit of disgust at some slight on 



134 nash's chef-d'ceuvre. 

the part of the town, was threatening to destroy its reputa- 
tion, or, as he politely expressed it, " to throw a toad into the 
spring." The Bathonians were alarmed and in consternation, 
when young Nash, who must have already distinguished him- 
self as a macaroni, stepped forward and offered to render the 
angry physician impotent. " We'll charm his toad out again 
with music," quoth he. He evidently thought very little of 
the watering-place, after his town experiences, and prepared to 
treat it accordingly. He got up a band in the Pump-room, 
brought thither in this manner the healthy as well as the sick, 
and soon raised the renown of Bath as a resort for gayety as 
well as for mineral waters. In a word, he displayed a sur- 
prising talent for setting every thing and every body to rights, 
and was, therefore, soon elected, by tacit voting, the King of 
Bath. 

He rapidly proved his qualifications for the position. First 
he secured his Orphean harmony by collecting a band sub- 
scription, which gave two guineas a piece to six performers ; 
then he engaged an official pumper for the Pump-room ; and 
lastly, finding that the bathers still gathered under a booth to 
drink their tea and talk their scandal, he induced one Harrison 
to build assembly-rooms, guaranteeing him three guineas a 
week to be raised by subscription. 

All this demanded a vast amount of impudence on Mr. 
Nash's part, and this he possessed to a liberal extent. The 
subscriptions flowed in regularly, and Nash felt his power in- 
crease with his responsibility. So, then, our minor monarch 
resolved to be despotic, and in a short time laid down laws for 
the guests, which they obeyed most obsequiously. Nash had 
not much wit, though a great deal of assurance, but these laws 
were his chef-d'oeuvre. Witness some of them : 

1. "That a visit of ceremony at first coming and another at 
going away, are all that are expected or desired by ladies of 
quality and fashion — except impertinents. 

4. " That no person takes it ill that any one goes to anoth- 
er's play or breakfast, and not theirs — except captious nature. 

5. "That no gentleman give his ticket for the balls to any 
but gentlewomen. N.B. — Unless he has none of his acquaint- 
ance. 

6. " That gentlemen crowding before the ladies at the ball, 
show ill manners ; and that none do so for the future except 
such as respect nobody but themselves. 

9. " That the younger ladies take notice how many eyes ob- 
serve them. N.B. — This does not extend to the Have-at-alls. 

1 0. " That all whisperers of lies and scandal be taken for 
their authors." 



THE BALL. 135 

Really this law of Nash's must have been repealed some 
time or other at Bath. Still more that which follows : 

11. "That repeaters of such lies and scandal be shunned by 
all company, except such as have been guilty of the same 
crime." 

There is a certain amount of satire in these Lycurgus stat- 
utes that shows Nash in the light of an observer of society ; 
but, query, whether any frequenter of Bath would not have 
devised as good ? 

The dances of those days must have been somewhat tedious. 
They began with a series of minuets, in which, of course, only 
one couple danced at a time, the most distinguished opening 
the ball. These solemn performances lasted about two hours, 
and we can easily imagine that the rest of the company were 
delighted when the country dances, which included every body, 
began. The ball opened at six ; the country dances began at 
eight : at nine there was a lull for the gentlemen to offer their 
partners tea ; in due course the dances were resumed, and at 
eleven Nash held up his hand to the musicians, and under no 
circumstances was the ball allowed to continue after that hour. 
Nash well knew the value of early hours to invalids, and he 
would not destroy the healing reputation of Bath for the sake 
of a little more pleasure. On one occasion the Princess Ame- 
lia implored him to allow one dance more. The despot re- 
plied, that his laws were those of Lycurgus, and could not be 
abrogated for any one. By this we see that the M. C. was al- 
ready an autocrat in his kingdom. 

Nor is it to be supposed that his majesty's laws were con- 
fined to such merely professional arrangements. Not a bit of 
it; in a very short time his impudence gave him undenied 
right of interference with the coats and gowns, the habits 
and manners, even the daily actions of his subjects, for so the 
visitors at Bath were compelled to become. 8i parva licet 
eomponere magnis, we may admit that the rise of Nash and 
that of Napoleon were owing to similar causes. The French 
emperor found France in a state of disorder, with which sensi- 
ble people were growing more and more disgusted ; he offered 
to restore order and propriety ; the French hailed him, and 
gladly submitted to his early decrees ; then, when he had got 
them into the habit of obedience, he could make what laws he 
liked, and use his power without fear of opposition. The Bath 
emperor followed the same course, and it may be asked wheth- 
er it does not demand as great an amount of courage, assur- 
ance, perseverance, and administrative power to subdue several 
hundreds of English ladies and gentlemen as to rise supreme 
above some millions of French republicans. Yet Nash expe- 



1:36 A PUBLIC BENEFACTOR. 

rienced less opposition than Napoleon ; Nash reigned longer, 
and had no infernal machine prepared to blow him np. 

Every body was delighted with the improvements in the 
Pump-room, the balls, the promenades, the chairmen — the 
Mouge ruffians of the mimic kingdom — whom he reduced to 
submission, and therefore nobody complained when Emperor 
Nash went farther, and made war upon the white aprons of 
the ladies and the boots of the gentlemen. The society was 
in fact in a very barbarous condition at the time, and people 
who came for pleasure liked to be at ease. Thus ladies lounged 
into the balls in their riding-hoods or morning dresses, gentle- 
men in boots with their pipes in their mouths. Such atroci- 
ties were intolerable to the late frequenter of London society, 
and in his imperious arrogance the new monarch used actually 
to pull off the white aprons of ladies who entered the assem- 
bly-rooms with that der/age article, and throw them upon the 
back seats. Like the French emperor again, he treated high 
and low in the same manner, and when the Duchess of Queens- 
berry appeared in an apron, coolly pulled it off, and told her 
it was only fit for a maid-servant. Her grace made no resist- 
ance. 

The men were not so submissive ; but the M. C. turned 
them into ridicule, and whenever a gentleman appeared at the 
assembly-rooms in boots, would walk up to him, and in a loud 
voice remark, " Sir, I think you have forgot your horse." To 
complete his triumph, he put the offenders into a song called 
" Trentinella's Invitation to the Assembly." 

" Come one and all, 
To Hoyden Hall, 

For there's the assembly this night ; 
None but prude fools, 
Mind manners and rules ; 

We Hoydens do decency slight. 

" Come trollops and slatterns, 
Cockt hats and white aprons; 

This best our modesty suits : 
For why should not we 
In a dress be as free 

As Hogs-Norton squires in boots ?" 

and as this was not enough, got up a puppet-show of a suffi- 
cient coarseness to suit the taste of the time, in which the prac- 
tice of wearing boots was satirized. 

His next onslaught was upon that of carrying swords; and 
in this respect Nash became a public benefactor, for in those 
days, though Chesterfield was the writer on etiquette, people 
were not well-bred enough to keep their tempers, and rivals 
for a lady's hand at a minuet, or gamblers who disputed over 



LIFE AT BATH IN NASH's TIME 13 V 

their cards, invariably settled the matter by an option be- 
tween suicide or murder under the polite name of duel. The 
M. C. wisely saw that these affairs would bring Bath into bad 
repute, and determined to supplant the rapier by the less dan- 
gerous cane. In this he was for a long time opposed, until a 
notorious torch-light duel between two gamblers, of whom one 
was run through the body, and the other, to show his contri- 
tion, turned Quaker, brought his opponents to a sense of the 
danger of a weapon always at hand ; and henceforth the sword 
was abolished. 

These points gained, the autocrat laid down rules for the 
employment of the visitors' time, and these, from setting the 
fashion to some, soon became a law to all. The first thing to 
be done was, sensibly enough, the ostensible object of their 
residence in Bath, the use of the baths. At an early hour 
four lusty chairmen waited on every lady to carry her, Avrap- 
ped in flannels, in 

" A little black box, just the size of a coffin," 

to one of the five baths. Here, on entering, an attendant placed 
beside her a floating tray, on which were set her handkerchief, 
bouquet, and snuff-box, for our great-great-grandmothers did 
take snuff; and here she found her friends in the same bath 
of naturally hot water. It was, of course, a reunion for socie- 
ty on the plea of health ; but the early hours and exercise se- 
cured the latter, whatever the baths may have done. A walk 
in the Pump-room, to the music of a tolerable band, was the 
next measure ; and there, of course, the gentlemen mingled 
with the ladies. A coffee-house was ready to receive those of 
either sex ; for that was a time when madame and miss lived 
a great deal in public, and English people were not ashamed 
of eating their breakfast in public company. These breakfasts 
were often enlivened by concerts paid for by the rich and en- 
joyed by all. 

Supposing the peacocks now to.be dressed out and to have 
their tails spread to the best advantage, we next find some in 
the public promenades, others in the reading-rooms, the ladies 
having their clubs as well as the men ; others riding ; others, 
perchance, already gambling. Mankind and womankind then 
dined at a reasonable hour, and the evening's amusements be- 
gan early. Nash insisted on this, knowing the value of health 
to those, and they were many at that time, who sought Bath 
on its account. The balls began at six, and took place every 
Tuesday and Friday, private balls filling up the vacant nights. 
About the commencement of his reign, a theatre was built, and 
whatever it may have been, it afterward became celebrated 



138 A COMPACT WITH THE DUKE OP BEAUPOKT. 

as the nursery of the London stage, and now, tempo passato ! 
is almost abandoned. It is needless to add that the gaming- 
tables were thronged in the evenings. 

It was at them that Nash made the money which sufficed to 
keep up his state, which was vulgarly regal. He drove about 
in a chariot, naming with heraldry, and drawn by six grays, 
with outriders, running footmen, and all the appendages which 
made an impression on the vulgar minds of the visitors of his 
kingdom. His dress was magnificent ; his gold lace unlimited, 
his coats ever new ; his hat alone was always of the same col- 
or — white ; and as the Emperor Alexander was distinguished 
by his purple tunic and Brummell by his bow, Emperor Nash 
was known all England over by his white hat. 

It is due to the King of Bath to say that, however much he 
gained, he always played fair. He even patronized young 
players, and after fleecing them, kindly advised them to play 
no more. When he found a man fixed upon ruining himself, 
he did his best to keep him from that suicidal act. This was 
the case with a young Oxonian, to whom he had lost money, 
and whom he invited to supper, in order to give him his pa- 
rental advice. The fool would not take the Beau's counsel, 
and " came to grief." Even noblemen sought his " protec- 
tion." The Duke of Beaufort entered on a compact with him 
to save his purse, if not his soul. He agreed to pay Nash ten 
thousand guineas, whenever he lost the same amount at a sit- 
ting. It was a comfortable treaty for our Beau, who accord- 
ingly watched his grace. Yet it must be said, to Nash's hon- 
or, that he once saved him from losing eleven thousand, when 
he had already lost eight, by reminding him of his compact. 
Such was play in those days ! It is said that the duke had 
afterward to pay the fine, from losing the stipulated sum at 
Newmarket. 

He displayed as much honesty with the young Lord Towns- 
hend, who lost to him his whole fortune, his estate, and even 
his carriage and horses— what madmen are gamblers — and 
actually canceled the whole debt, on condition my lord should 
pay him £5000 whenever he chose to claim it. To Nash's 
honor it must be said that he never came down upon the no- 
bleman during his life. He claimed the sum from his execu- 
tors, who paid it. " Honorable to both parties." 

But an end was put to the gaming at Bath and every where 
else — except in a royal palace, and Nash swore that, as he was 
a king, Bath came under the head of the exceptions — by an 
Act of Parliament. Of course Nash and the sharpers who fre- 
quented Bath — and their name was Legion — found means to 
evade this law for a time, by the invention of new games. But 



ANECDOTES OF NASH. 139 

tliis could not last, and the Beau's fortune went with the death 
of the dice. 

Still, however, the very prohibition increased the zest for 
play for a time, and Nash soon discovered that a private table 
was more profitable than a public one. He entered into an 
arrangement with an old woman at Bath, in virtue of which 
he was to receive a fourth share of the profits. This was prob- 
ably not the only " hell" -keeping transaction of his life, and he 
had once before quashed an action against a cheat in consider- 
ation of a handsome bonus ; and, in fact, there is no saying 
what amount of dirty work Nash would not have done for a 
hundred or so, especially when the game of the table was shut 
up to him. The man was immensely fond of money ; he liked 
to show his gold-laced coat and superb new waistcoat in the 
Grove, the Abbey Ground, and Bond Street, and to be known 
as Le Grand Nash. But on the other hand, he did not love 
money for itself, and never hoarded it. It is, indeed, some- 
thing to Nash's honor, that he died poor. He delighted, in 
the poverty of his mind, to display his great thick-set person 
to the most advantage ; he was as vain as any fop, without the 
affectation of that character, for he was always blunt and free- 
spoken, but, as long as he had enough to satisfy his vanity, he 
cared nothing for mere wealth. He had generosity, though 
he neglected the precept about the right hand and the left, and 
showed some ostentation in his charities. When a poor ruin- 
ed fellow at his elbow saw him win at a throw £200, and mur- 
mured " How happy that would make me !" Nash tossed the 
money to him, and said, " Go and be happy then." Probably 
the w T itless beau did not see the delicate satire implied in his 
speech. It was only the triumph of a gamester. On other 
occasions he collected subscriptions for poor curates and so 
forth, in the same spirit, and did his best toward founding a 
hospital, which has since proved of great value to those afflict- 
ed with rheumatic gout. In the same spirit, though himself a 
gamester, he often attempted to win young and inexperienced 
boys, who came to toss away their money at the rooms, from 
seeking their own ruin; and, on the whole, there was some 
goodness of heart in this gold-laced bear. 

That he was a bear there are anecdotes enough to show, and 
whether true or not, they sufficiently prove what the reputa- 
tion of the man must have been. Thus, when a lady, afflicted 
with a curvature of the spine, told him that " She had come 
straight from London that day," Nash replied w T ith utter 
heartlessness, "Then, ma'am, you've been damnably warpt on 
the road." The lady had her revenge, however, for meeting 
the beau one day in the Grove, as she toddled along with her 



140 "MISS SYLVIA." 

dog, and being impudently asked by him, if she knew the name 
of Tobit's dog, she answered quickly, " Yes, sir, his name was 
Nash, and a most impudent dog he was too." 

It is due to Nash to state that he made many attempts to 
put an end to the perpetual system of scandal, which from 
some hidden cause seems always to be connected with mineral 
springs ; but as he did not banish the old maids, of course he 
failed. Of the young ladies and their reputation he took a 
kind of paternal care, and in that day they seem to have need- 
ed it, for even at nineteen, those who had any money to lose, 
staked it at the tables with as much gusto as the wrinkled, 
puckered, greedy-eyed " single woman," of a certain or uncer- 
tain age. Nash protected and cautioned them, and even gave 
them the advantage of his own unlimited experience. Wit- 
ness, for instance, the care he took of " Miss Sylvia," a lovely 
heiress who brought her face and her fortune to enslave some 
and enrich others of the loungers of Bath. She had a terrible 
love of hazard, and very little prudence, so that Nash's good 
offices were much needed in the case. The young lady soon 
became the standing toast at all the clubs and suppers, and 
lovers of her, or her ducats, crowded round her ; but though 
at that time she might have made a brilliant match, she chose, 
as young women will do, to fix her affections upon one of the 
worst men in Bath, who, naturally enough, did not return 
them. When this individual, as a climax to his misadventures, 
was clapt into prison, the devoted young creature gave the 
greater part of her fortune in order to pay off his debts, and 
falling into disrepute from this act of generosity, which was, 
of course, interpreted after a worldly fashion, she seems to 
have lost her honor with her fame, and the fair Sylvia took a 
position which could not be creditable to her. At last the 
poor girl, weary of slights, and overcome with shame, took her 
silk sash and hanged herself. The terrible event made a nine 
hours' — not nine days' — sensation in Bath, which was too busy 
with mains and aces to care about the fate of one who had long 
sunk out of its circles. 

When Nash reached the zenith of his power, the adulation 
he received was somewhat of a parody on the flattery of court- 
iers. True, he had his bards from Grub Street who sang his 
praises, and he had letters to show from Sarah of Marlborough 
and others of that calibre, but his chief worshipers were cooks, 
musicians, and even imprisoned highwaymen — one of whom 
disclosed the secrets of the craft to him — who wrote him ded- 
ications, letters, poems and what not. The good city of Bath 
set up his statue, and did Newton and Pope* the great honor 

* A full-length statue of Nash was placed between busts of Newton and 
Pope. 



nash's sun setting. 141 

of playing " supporters" to him, which elicited from Chester- 
field some well-known lines : 

"This statue placed the busts between 
Adds to the satire strength ; 
Wisdom and Wit are little seen, 
But Folly at full length." 

Meanwhile his private character was none of the best. He 
had in early life had one attachment, besides that unfortunate 
affair for which his friends had removed him from Oxford, and 
in that had behaved with great magnanimity. The young 
lady had honestly told him that he had a rival ; the Beau sent 
for him, settled on her a fortune equal to that her father in- 
tended for her, and himself presentee! her to the favored suitor. 
Now, however, he seems to have given up all thoughts of 
matrimony, and gave himself up to mistresses, who cared more 
for his gold than for himself. It was an awkward conclusion 
to Nash's generous act in that one case, that before a year 
had passed, the bride ran away with her husband's footman ; 
yet, though it disgusted him with ladies, it does not seem to 
have cured him of his attachment to the sex in general. 

In the height of his glory Nash was never ashamed of re- 
ceiving adulation. He was as fond of flattery as Le Grand 
Monarque — and he paid for it too — whether it came from a 
prince or a chairman. Every day brought him some fresh 
meed of praise in prose or verse, and Nash was always de- 
lighted. 

But his sun was to set in time. His fortune went when 
gaming was put down, for he had no other means of subsist- 
ence. Yet he"lived on : he had not the good sense to die ; and 
he reached the patriarchal of eighty-seven. In his old age he 
was not only garrulous, but bragging : he told stories of his 
exploits in which he, Mr. Richard Nash, came out as the first 
swordsman, swimmer, leaper, and what not. But by this time 
people began to doubt Mr. Richard Nash's long bow, and the 
yarns he spun were listened to with impatience. He grew 
rude and testy in his old age ; suspected Quin, the actor, who 
was living at Bath, of an intention to supplant him ; made 
coarsej impertinent repartees to the visitors at that city, and 
in general raised up a dislike to himself. Yet, as other mon- 
archs have had their eulogists in sober mind, Nash had his in 
one of the most depraved; and Anstey, the low-minded author 
of "The New Bath Guide," panegyrized him a short time after 
his death in the following verses : 

"Yet here no confusion — no tumult is known ; 
Fair order and beauty establish their throne ; 



142 A PANEGYRIC. 

For order, and beauty, and just regulation, 

Support all the works of this ample creation. 

For this, in compassion to mortals below, 

The gods, their peculiar favor to show, 

Sent Hermes to Bath in the shape of a beau : 

That grandson of Atlas came down from above 

To bless all the regions of pleasure and love ; 

To lead the fair nymph thro' the various maze, 

Bright beauty to marshal, his glory and praise ; 

To govern, improve, and adorn the gay scene, 

By the Graces instructed, and Cyprian queen : 

As when in a garden delightful and gay, 

Where Flora is wont all her charms to display, 

The sweet hyacinthus with pleasure we view, 

Contend with narcissus in delicate hue ; 

The gard'ner, industrious, trims out his border, 

Puts each odoriferous plant in its order ; 

The myrtle he ranges, the rose and the lily, 

With iris, and crocus, and daffa-down-dilly; 

Sweet peas and sweet oranges all he disposes, 

At once to regale both your eyes and your noses. 

Long reign'd the great Nash, this omnipotent lord, 

Respected by youth, and by parents ador'd ; 

For him not enough at a ball to preside, 

The unwary and beautiful nymph would lie guide ; 

Oft tell her a tale, how the credulous maid 

By man, by perfidious man, is betrayed ; 

Taught Charity's hand to relieve the distress'd, 

While tears have his tender compassion express'd , 

But alas ! he is gone, and the city can tell 

How in years and in glory lamented he fell. 

Him mourn'd all the Dryads on Claverton's mount ; 

Him Avon deplor'd, him the nymph of the fount, 

The crystalline streams. 

Then perish his picture — his statue decay — 

A tribute more lasting the Muses shall pay. 

If true, what philosophers all will assure us, 

Who dissent from the doctrine of great Epicurus, 

That the spirit's immortal (as poets allow) : 

In reward of his labors, his virtue and pains, 

He is footing it now in the Elysian plains, 

Indulg'd, as a token of Proserpine's favor, 

To preside at her balls in a cream-color'd beaver. 

Then peace to his ashes — our grief be suppress'd, 

Since we find such a phcenix has sprung from his nest: 

Kind Heaven has sent us another professor, 

Who follows the steps of his great predecessor." 

The end of the Bath Beau was somewhat less tragical than 
that of his London successor — Bruramell. Nash, in his old 
age and poverty, hung about the clubs and supper-tables, but- 
ton-holed youngsters, who thought him a bore, spun his long 
yarns, and tried to insist on obsolete fashions, when near the 
end of his life's century. 

The clergy took more care of him than the youngsters. 



NASH S FUNERAL. 143 

They heard that Nash was an octogenarian, and likely to die in 
his sins, and resolved to do their best to shrive him. Worthy 
and well-meaning men accordingly wrote him long letters, 
which, if he read, the Beau must have had more patience than 
Ave can lay claim to. There was, however, a great deal of 
hell-fire in these effusions, and there was nothing which Nash 
dreaded so much. As long as there was immediate fear of 
death, he was pious and humble; the moment the fear had 
passed, he was jovial and indifferent again. His especial de- 
light, to the last, seems to have been swearing against the doc- 
tors, whom he treated like the individual in Anstey's "Bath 
Guide," shying their medicines out of window upon their own 
heads. But the wary old Beckoner called him in, in due time, 
with his broken, empty-chested voice ; and Nash was forced 
to obey. Death claimed him — and much good it got of him — 
in 1761, at the age of eighty-seven : there are few beaux who 
lived so long. 

Thus ended a life, of which the moral lay, so to speak, out 
of it. The worthies of Bath were true to the worship of 
Folly, whom Anstey so well, though indelicately, describes as 
there conceiving Fashion ; and though Nash, old, slovenly, 
disrespected, had long ceased to be either beau or monarch, 
treated his huge, unlovely corpse with the honor due to the 
great — or little. His funeral was as glorious as that of any 
hero, and far more showy, though much less solemn, than the 
burial of Sir John Moore. Perhaps for a bit of prose flum- 
mery, by way of contrast to Wolfe's lines on the latter event, 
there is little to equal the account in a contemporary paper : 
"Sorrow sate upon every face, and even children lisped that 
their sovereign was no more. The awfulness of the solemnity 
made the deepest impression on the minds of the distressed 
inhabitants. The peasant discontinued his toil, the ox rested 
from the plow, all nature seemed to sympathize with their 
loss, and the muffled bells rung a peal of bob-major." 

The Beau left little behind him, and that little not worth 
much, even including his renown. Most of the presents which 
fools or flatterers had made him, had long since been sent chez 
ma tante; a few trinkets and pictures, and a few books, which 
probably he had never read, constituted his little store.* 

Bath and Tunbridge — for he had annexed that lesser king- 
dom to his own — had reason to mourn him, for he had almost 
made them what they were ; but the country has not much 
cause to thank the upholder of gaming, the institutor of silly 

* In the "Annual Eegister" (vol. v. p. 37), it is stated that a pension of 
ten guineas a month was paid to Nash during the latter years of his life by 
the Corporation of Bath. 



144 HIS CHARACTERISTICS. 

fashion, and the high-priest of folly. Yet Nash was free from 
many vices we should expect to find in such a man. He did 
not drink, for instance; one glass of wine, and a moderate 
quantity of small beer, being his allowance for dinner. He 
was early in his hours, and made others sensible in theirs. 
He was generous and charitable when he had the money ; and 
when he had not he took care to make his subjects subscribe 
it. In a word, there have been worse men and greater fools ; 
and we may again ask whether those who obeyed and flatter- 
ed him were not more contemptible than Beau Nash himself. 
So much for the powers of impudence and a fine coat ! 



PHILIP, DUKE OF WHARTON. 

If an illustration were wanted of that character unstable as 
water which shall not excel, this duke would at once supply 
it : if we had to warn genius against self-indulgence — some 
clever boy against extravagance — some poet against the bot- 
tle — this is the "shocking example" we should select: if we 
wished to show how the most splendid talents, the greatest 
wealth, the most careful education, the most unusual advan- 
tages, may all prove useless to a man who is too vain or too 
frivolous to use them properly, it is enough to cite that no- 
bleman, whose acts gained for him the name of the infamous 
Duke of Wharton. Never was character more mercurial, or 
life more unsettled than his ; never, perhaps, were more changes 
crowded into a fewer number of years, more fame and infamy 
gathered into so short a space. Suffice it to say, that when 
Pope wanted a man to hold up to the scorn of the world, as ;i 
sample of wasted abilities, it was Wharton that he chose, and 
his lines rise in grandeur in proportion to the vileness of the 
theme : 

"Wharton, the scorn and wonder of our days. 

Whose riding passion was a love of praise. 

Born with whate'er could win it from the wise. 

Women and fools must like him or he dies ; 

Though raptured senates hung on all lie spoke. 

The club must hail him master of the joke. 

Shall parts so various aim at nothing new ? 

He'll shrne a Tully and a Wilmot too. 
* * * * 

Thus with each gift of nature and of art, 
And wanting nothing but an honest heart ; 
Grown all to all, from no one vice exempt. 
And most contemptible, to shun contempt ; 
His passion still, to covet general praise, 
His life to forfeit it a thousand ways; 
A constant bounty which no friend has made : 
An angel tongue which no man can persuade : 
A fool with more of wit than all mankind ; 
Too rash for thought, for action too refined." 

And then those memorable lines — 

"A tyrant to the wife his heart approved, 
A rebel to the very king he loved ; 
lie dies, sad outcast of each church and state ; « 
And, harder still ! flagitious, yet not great." 
Though it may be doubted if the "lust of praise" was the 

G 



146 wharton's ancestors. — his early years. 

cause of his eccentricities, so much as an utter restlessness 
and instability of character, Pope's description is sufficiently 
correct, and will prepare us for one of the most disappointing 
lives we could well have to read. 

Philip, Duke of Wharton, was one of those men of whom 
an Irishman would say, that they were fortunate before they 
were born. His ancestors bequeathed him a name that stood 
high in England for bravery and excellence. The first of the 
house, Sir Thomas Wharton, had won his peerage from Henry 
VIII. for routing some 15,000 Scots with 500 men, and other 
gallant deeds. From his father the marquis he inherited much 
of his talents ; but for the heroism of the former, he seems to 
have received it only in the extravagant form of foolhardiness. 
Walpole remembered, but could not tell where, a ballad he 
wrote on being arrested by the guard in St. James's Park, for 
singing the Jacobite song, "The King shall have his own 
again," and quotes two lines to show that he was not ashamed 
of his own cowardice on the occasion : 

"The duke he drew out half his sword — 
The guard drew out the rest." 

At the siege of Gibraltar, where he took up arms against 
his own king and country, he is said to have gone alone one 
night to the very walls of the town, and challenged the out- 
post. They asked him who he was, and when he replied, 
openly enough, "The Duke of Wharton," they actually allow- 
ed, him to return without either firing on or capturing him. 
The story seems somewhat apocryphal, but it is quite possible 
that the English soldiers may have refrained from violence to 
a well-known madcap nobleman of their own nation. 

Philip, son of the Marquis of Wharton, at that time only a 
baron, was born in the last year but one of the seventeenth 
century, and came into the world endowed with every quality 
which might have made a great man, if he had only added 
wisdom to them. His father wished to make him a brilliant 
statesman, and, to have a better chance of doing so, kept him 
at home, and had him educated under his own eye. He seems 
to have easily and rapidly acquired a knowledge of classical 
languages ; and his memory was so keen that when a boy of 
thirteen he could repeat the greater part of the "iEneid" and 
of Horace by heart. His father's keen perception did not al- 
low him to stop at classics ; and he wisely prepared him for 
the career to which he was destined by the study of history, 
ancient and modern, and of English literature, and by teach- 
ing him, even at that early age, the art of thinking and writ- 
ing on any given subject, by proposing themes for essays. 
There is certainly no surer mode of developing the reflective 



MARRIAGE AT SIXTEEN". 147 

and reasoning powers of the mind ; and the boy progressed 
with a rapidity which was almost alarming. Oratory, too, 
was of course cultivated, and to this end the young nobleman 
was made to recite before a small audience passages from 
Shakspeare, and even speeches which had been delivered in 
the House of Lords, and we may be certain he showed no 
bashfulness in this display. 

He was precocious beyond measure, and at sixteen was a 
man. His first act of folly — or, perhaps, he thought of man- 
hood — came off at this early age. He fell in love with the 
daughter of a Major General Holmes ; and though there is 
nothing extraordinary in that, for nine tenths of us have been 
love-mad at as early an age, he did what fortunately very few 
do in a first love affair, he married the adored one. Early 
marriages are often extolled, and justly enough, as safeguards 
against profligate habits, but this one seems to have had the 
contrary effect on young Philip. His wife was in every sense 
too good for him : he was madly in love with her at first, but 
soon shamefully and openly faithless. Pope's line, 

"A tyrant to the wife his heart approved," 

requires explanation here. It is said that she did not present 
her boy-husband with a son for three years after their mar- 
riage, and on this child he set great value and great hopes. 
About that time he left his wife in the country, intending to 
amuse himself in town, and ordered her to remain behind with 
the child. The poor deserted woman well knew what was the 
real object of this journey, and could not endure the separation. 
In the hope of keeping her young husband out of harm, and 
none the less because she loved him very tenderly, she follow- 
ed him soon after, taking the little Marquis of Malmsbury, as 
the young live branch was called, with her. The duke was, of 
course, disgusted, but his anger was turned into hatred, when 
the child, which he had hoped to make his heir and successor, 
caught in town the small-pox, and died in infancy. He was 
furious with his wife, refused to see her for a long time, and 
treated her with unrelenting coldness. 

The early marriage was much to the distaste of Philip's fa- 
ther, who had been lately made a marquis, and who hoped to 
arrange a very grand " alliance" for his petted son. He was, 
in fact, so much grieved by it, that he was fool enough to die 
of it in 1715, and the marchioness survived him only about a 
year, being no less disgusted with the licentiousness which she 
already discovered in her Young Hopeful. 

She did what she could to set him right, and the young 
married man was shipped off with a tutor, a French Hague- 



148 WHARTON TAKES LEAVE OF HIS TUTOR. 

not, who was to take him to Geneva to be educated as a Prot- 
estant and a Whig. The young scamp declined to be either. 
He was taken, by way of seeing the world, to the petty courts 
of Germany, and of course to that of Hanover, which had kind- 
ly sent us the worst family that ever disgraced the English 
fhrone, and by the various princes and grand dukes received 
with all the honors due to a young British nobleman. 

The tutor and his charge settled at last at Geneva, and my 
young Lord amused himself with tormenting his strict guardian. 
Walpole tells us that he once roused him out of bed only to bor- 
row a pin. There is no doubt that he led the worthy man a sad 
life of it ; and to put a climax to his conduct, ran away from 
him at last, leaving with him, by way of hostage, a young 
bear-cub — probably quite as tame as himself — which he had 
picked up somewhere, and grown very fond of — birds of a 
feather, seemingly — with a message, which showed more wit 
than good-nature, to this effect : " Being no longer able to 
bear with your ill usage, I think proper to be gone from you ; 
however, that you may not want company, I have left you the 
bear, as the most suitable companion in the world that could 
be picked out for you." 

The tutor had to console himself with a tic qvoque, for the 
young scajoegrace had found his way to Lyons in October, 
1716, and then did the very thing his father's son should not 
have done. The Chevalier de St. George, the Old Pretender, 
James III., or by whatever other alias you prefer to call him, 
having failed in the attempt " to have his own again" in the 
preceding year, was then holding high court in high dudgeon 
at Avignon. Any adherent would, of course, be welcomed 
with open arms ; and when the young marquis wrote to him 
to offer his allegiance, sending with his letter a fine entire 
horse as a peace offering, he was warmly responded to. A 
person of rank w r as at once dispatched to bring the youth to 
the ex-regal court ; he was welcomed with much enthusiasm, 
and the empty title of Duke of Northumberland at once, most 
kindly, conferred on him. However, the young marquis does 
not seem to have c/oute the exile's court, for he staid there 
one day only, and returning to Lyons, set off to enjoy himself 
at Paris. With much wit, no prudence, and a plentiful sup- 
ply of mone"y, which he threw about with the recklessness of 
a boy just escaped from his tutor, he could not fail to succeed 
in that capital; and, accordingly, the English received him 
with open arms. E?en the embassador, Lord Stair, though 
he had heard rumors of his wild doings, invited him repeat- 
edly to dinner, and did his best, by advice and warning, to 
keep him out of harm's way. Young Philip had a horror of 




w it auton's roguish present. 



FROLICS AT PAHIS. 151 

preceptors, paid or gratuitous, and treated the plenipotentiary 
with the same coolness as he had served the Huguenot tutor. 
When the former, praising the late marquis, expressed — by 
way of a slight hint — a hope "that he would follow so illus- 
trious an example of fidelity to his prince, and affection to his 
country, by treading in the same steps," the young scamp re- 
plied, cleverly enough, "That he thanked his excellency for 
his good advice, and as his excellency had also a worthy and 
deserving father, he hoped he would likewise copy so bright 
an example, and tread in all his steps ;" the pertness of which 
was pertinent enough, for old Lord Stair had taken a dis- 
graceful part against his sovereign in the massacre of Glencoe. 

His frolics at Paris were of the most reckless character for 
a young nobleman. At the embassador's own table he would 
occasionally send a servant to some one of the guests, to ask 
him to join in the Old Chevalier's health, though it was almost 
treason at that time to mention his name even. And again, 
when the windows at the embassy had been broken by a 
young English Jacobite, who was forthwith committed to Fort 
FEveque, the harebrained marquis proposed, out of revenge, 
to break them a second time, and only abandoned the project 
because he could get no one to join him in it. Lord Stair t 
however, had too much sense to be offended at the follies of a 
boy of seventeen, even though that boy was the representa- 
tive of a great English family ; he, probably, thought it would 
be better to recall him to his allegiance by kindness and ad- 
vice, than, by resenting his behavior, to drive him irrevocably 
to the opposite party ; but he was doubtless considerably re- 
lieved when, after leading a wild life in the capital of France, 
spending his money lavishly, and doing precisely every thing 
which a young English nobleman ought not to do, my lord 
marquis took his departure in December, 171G. 

The political education he had received now made the un- 
stable youth ready and anxious to shine in the State ; but be- 
ing yet under age, he could not, of course, take his seat in the 
House of Lords. Perhaps he was conscious of his own won- 
derful abilities ; perhaps, as Pope declares, he was thirsting for 
praise, and wished to display them ; certainly he w T as itching 
to become an orator, and as he could not sit in an English 
Parliament, he remembered that he had a peerage in Ireland, 
as Earl of Rathfernhame and Marquis of Catherlogh, and off 
he set to see if the Milesians would stand upon somewhat less 
ceremony. He was not disappointed there. "His brilliant 
parts," we are told by contemporary writers, but rather, we 
should think, his reputation for wit and eccentricity, " found 
favor in the eyes of Hibernian quicksilvers, and in spite of his 
years, he was admitted to the Irish House of Lords." 



152 ZEAL FOR THE ORANGE CAUSE. 

When a friend had reproached him, before he left France, 
with infidelity to the principles so long espoused by his fami- 
ly, he is reported to have replied, characteristically enough, 
that " he had pawned his principles to Gordon, the Chevalier's 
banker, for a considerable sum, and, till he could repay him, 
he must be a Jacobite ; but when that was clone, he would 
again return to the Whigs." It is as likely as not that he bor- 
rowed from Gordon on the strength of the Chevalier's favor, for 
though a marquis in his own right, he was even at this period 
always in want of cash ; and on the other hand, the speech, 
exhibiting the grossest want of any sense of honor, is in thor- 
ough keeping with his after-life. But whether he paid Gordon 
onhis return to England — which is highly improbable — or 
whether he had not honor enough to keep his compact — which 
is extremely likely — there is no doubt that my lord marquis 
began, at this period, to qualify himself for the post of parish 
weathercock to St. Stephens. 

His early defection to a man who, whether rightful heir or 
not, had that of romance in his history which is even now suf- 
ficient to make our young ladies " thorough Jacobites" at 
heart, was easily to be excused, on the plea of youth and high 
spirit. The same excuse does not explain his rapid return to 
Whiggery — in which there is no romance at all — the moment 
he took his seat in the Irish House of Lords. There is only 
one way to explain the zeal with which he now advocated the 
Orange cause: he must have been either a very designing 
knave, or a very unprincipled fool. As he gained nothing by 
the change but a dukedom for which he did not care, and as 
he caredfor little else that the government could give him, we 
may acquit him of any very deep motives. On the other hand, 
his life and some of his letters show that, with a vast amount 
of bravado, he was sufficiently a coward. When supplicated, 
he was always obstinate ; when neglected, always supplicant. 
Now it required some courage in those days to be a Jacobite. 
Perhaps he cared for nothing but to astonish and disgust ev- 
ery body with the facility with which he could turn his coat, 
as' a hippodromist does with the ease with which he changes 
his costume. He was a boy and a peer, and he would make 
pretty play of his position. He had considerable talents, and 
now, as he sat in the Irish House, devoted them entirely to the 
support of the government. 

For the next four years he was employed, on the one hand 
in political, on the other in profligate, life. He shone in both ; 
and was no less admired, by the wits of those days, for his 
speeches, his ai'guments, and his zeal, than for the utter disre- 
gard of public decency he displayed in his vices. Such a 



TIIE TRIAL C " ATTEEBUEY. 153 

promising youth, adhering to the government, merited some 
mark of its esteem, and accordingly, before attaining the age 
of twenty-one, he was raised to a dukedom. Being of age, he 
took his seat in the English House of Lords, and had not been 
long there before he again turned coat, and came out in the 
light of a Jacobite hero. It was now that he gathered most 
of his laurels. 

The Hanoverian monarch had been on the English throne 
some six years. Had the Chevalier's attempt occurred at this 
period, it may be doubted if it would not have been successful. 
The " Old Pretender" came too soon, the "Young Pretender" 
too late. At the period of the first attempt, the public had 
had no time to contrast Stuarts and Guelphs : at that of the 
second, they had forgotten the one and grown accustomed to 
the other ; but at the moment when our young duke appeared 
on the boards of the senate, the vices of the Hanoverians were 
beginning to draw down on them the contempt of the educa- 
ted and the ridicule of the vulgar ; and perhaps no moment 
could have been more favorable for advocating a restoration 
of the Stuarts. If Wharton had had as much energy and con- 
sistency as he had talent and impudence, he might have done 
much toward that desirable, or undesirable, end. 

The grand question at this time before the House was the 
trial of Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester, demanded by Sir Rob- 
ert Walpole. The man had a spirit almost as restless as his 
defender. The son of a man who might have been the orig- 
inal of the Vicar of Bray, he was very little of a poet, less of a 
priest, but a great deal of a politician. He was born in 1662, 
so that at this time he must have been nearly sixty years old. 
He had had by no means a hard life of it, for family interest, 
together with eminent talents, procured him one appointment 
after another, till he reached the bench, at the age of fifty-one, 
in the reign of Anne. He had already distinguished himself 
in several ways, most, perhaps, by controversies with Hoadly, 
and by sundry high-church motions. But after his elevation, 
he displayed his principles more boldly, refused to sign the 
Declaration of the Bishops, which was somewhat servilely 
made to assure George the First of the fidelity of the Estab- 
lished Church, suspended the curate of Gravesend for three 
years because he allowed the Dutch to have a service perform- 
ed in his church, and even, it is said, on the death of Anne, 
offered to proclaim King James III., and head a procession 
himself in his lawn sleeves. The end of this and other vaga- 
ries was, that in 1722, the Government sent him to the Tower, 
on suspicion of being connected with a plot in favor of the Old 
Chevalier. The case excited no little attention, for it was 

G 2 



154 wharton's defense of the bishop. 

long since a bishop had been charged with high treason ; it 
was added that his jailers used him rudely ; and, in short, pub- 
lic sympathy rather went along with him for a time. In 
March, 1723, a bill was presented to the Commons, for "in- 
flicting certain pains and penalties on Francis, Lord Bishop of 
Rochester," and it passed that House in April ; but when car- 
ried up to the Lords, a defense was resolved on. The bill 
was read a third time on May 15th, and on that occasion the 
Duke of Wharton, then only twenty-four years old, rose and 
delivered a speech in favor of the bishop. This oration far 
more resembled that of a lawyer summing up the evidence 
than of a parliamentary orator enlarging on the general issue. 
It was remarkable for the clearness of its argument, the won- 
derful memory of facts it displayed, and the ease and rapidity 
with which it annihilated the testimony of various witnesses 
examined before the House. It was mild and moderate, able 
and sufficient, but seems to have lacked all the enthusiasm we 
might expect from one who was afterward so active a partisan 
of the Chevalier's cause. In short, striking as it was, it can 
not be said to give the duke any claim to the title of a great 
orator ; it would rather prove that he might have made a first- 
rate lawyer. It shows, however, that had he chosen to apply 
himself diligently to politics, he might have turned out a great 
leader of the Opposition. 

Neither this speech nor the bishop's able defense saved him; 
and in the following month he was banished the kingdom, and 
passed the rest of his days in Paris. 

"Wharton, however, was not content with the House as an 
arena of political agitation. He w r as now old enough to have 
matured his principles thoroughly, and he completely espoused 
the cause of the exiled family. He amused himself with agi- 
tating throughout the country, influencing elections, and seek- 
ing popularity by becoming a member of the Wax-chandlers' 
Company. It is a proof of his great abilities, so shamefully 
thrown away, that he now, during the course of eight months, 
issued a paper, called " The True Briton," every Monday and 
Friday, written by himself, and containing varied and sensible 
arguments in support of his opinions, if not displaying any 
vast amount of original genius. This paper, on the model of 
" The Tatler," " The Spectator," etc., had a considerable sale, 
and attained no little celebrity, so that the Duke of Wharton 
acquired the reputation of a literary man as well as of a polit- 
ical leader. 

But, whatever he might have been in either capacity, his 
disgraceful life soon destroyed all hope of success in them. He 
was now an acknowledged wit about town, and, what was then 



SIR ROBERT WALPOLE DUPED. 155 

almost a recognized concomitant of that character, an acknowl- 
edged profligate. He scattered his large fortune in the most 
reckless and foolish manner : though married, his moral con- 
duct was as bad as that of any bachelor of the day ; and such 
was his extravagance and open licentiousness, that, having 
wasted a princely revenue, he was soon caught in the meshes 
of Chancery, which very sensibly vested his fortune in the 
hands of trustees, and compelled him to be satisfied with an 
income of twelve hundred pounds a year. 

The young rascal now showed hypocritical signs of peni- 
tence — he was always an adept in that line — and protested he 
would go abroad and live quietly, till his losses should be re- 
trieved. There is little doubt that, under this laudable design, 
he conceived one of attaching himself closer to the Chevalier 
party, and even espousing the faith of that unfortunate prince, 
or pretender, whichever he may have been. He set off for 
Vienna, leaving his wife behind to die, in April, 1726. He 
had long since quarreled with her, and treated her with cruel 
neglect, and at her death he was not likely to be much afflict- 
ed. It is said, that, after that event, a ducal family offered 
him a daughter and large fortune in marriage, and that the 
Duke of Wbarton declined the offer, because the latter was to 
be tied up, and he could not conveniently tie up the former. 
However this may be, he remained a widower for a short 
time : we may be sure, not long. 

The hypocrisy of going abroad to retrench was not long un- 
discovered. The fascinating scapegrace seems to have delight- 
ed in playing on the credulity of others ; and Walpole relates 
that, on the eve of the day on which he delivered his famous 
speech for Atterbury, he sought an interview with the minis- 
ter, Sir Robert Walpole, expressed great contrition at having 
espoused the bishop's cause hitherto, and a determination to 
speak against him the following day. The minister was taken 
in, and at the duke's request, supplied him with all the main 
arguments, pro and con. The duper, having got these well 
into his brain — one of the most retentive — repaired to his Lon- 
don haunts, passed the night in drinking, and the next day pro- 
duced all the arguments he had digested, in the bishop's favor. 

At Vienna he was well received, and carried out his private 
mission successfully, but was too restless to stay in one place, 
and soon set off for Madrid. Tired now of politics, he took a 
turn at love. He was a poet after a fashion, for the pieces he 
has left are not very good : he was a fine gentleman, always 
spending more money than he had, and is said to have been 
handsome. His portraits do not give us this impression : the 
features are not very regular ; and though not coarse are cer- 



156 VERY TRYING. 

tainly not refined. The mouth, somewhat sensual, is still much 
firmer than his character would lead us to expect; the nose 
sharp at the point, but cogitative at the nostrils ; the eyes long 
but not large; while the raised brow has all that openness 
which he displayed in the indecency of his vices, but not in 
any honesty in his political career. In a word, the face is not 
attractive. Yet he is described as having had a brilliant com- 
plexion, a lively, varying expression, and a charm of person 
and manner that was quite irresistible. Whether on this ac- 
count, or for his talents and wit, which were really shining, 
Ins new Juliet fell as deeply in love with him as he with her. 

She was maid of honor — and a highly honorable maid — to 
the Queen of Spain. The Irish regiments long employed in the 
Spanish service had become more or less naturalized in that 
country, which accounts for the great number of thoroughly 
Milesian names still to be found there, some of them, as O'Don- 
nell, owned by men of high distinction. Among other officers 
who had settled with their families in the Peninsula was a Co- 
lonel O'Byrne, who, like most of his countrymen there, died 
penniless, leaving his widow with a pension and his daughter 
without a sixpence. It can well be imagined that an offer from 
an English duke was not to be sneezed at by either Mrs. or 
Miss O'Byrne; but there were some grave obstacles to the 
match. The duke was a Protestant. But what of that ? he 
had never been encumbered with religion, nor even with a de- 
cent observance of its institutions, for it is said that, when in 
England, at his country seat, he had, to show how little he 
cared for respectability, made a point of having the hounds 
out on a Sunday morning. He was not going to lose a pretty 
girl for the sake of a faith with which he had got disgusted 
ever since his Huguenot tutor tried to make him a sober Chris- 
tian. He had turned coat in politics, and would now try his 
weathercock capabilities at religion. Nothing like variety, so 
Romanist he became. 

But this was not all: his friends on the one hand objected to 
his maiTying a penniless girl, and hers, on the other, warned 
her of his disreputable character. But when two people have 
made up their minds to be one, such trifles as these are of no 
consequence. A far more trying obstacle was the absolute re- 
fusal of her Most Catholic Majesty to allow her maid of honor 
to marry the duke. 

It is a marvel that after the life of dissipation he had led, 
this man should have retained the power of loving at all. But 
every thing about him was extravagant, and now that he en- 
tertained a virtuous attachment, he was as wild in it as he had 
been reckless in less respectable connections. He must have 






THE DUKE OF WHARTON'S " WHENS." 157 

been sincere at the time, for the queen's refusal was followed 
by a fit of depression that brought on a low fever. The queen 
heard of it, and, touched by the force of his devotion, sent him 
a cheering message. The moment was not to be lost, and, in 
spite of his weak state, he hurried to court, threw himself at 
her Majesty's feet, and swore lie must have his lady-love or die. 
Thus pressed, the queen was forced to consent, but warned him 
that he would repent of it. The marriage took place, and the 
couple set off to Koine. 

Here the Chevalier again received him with open arms, and 
took the opportunity of displaying his imaginary sovereignty 
by bestowing on him the Order of the Garter — a politeness the 
duke returned by wearing while there the no less unrecognized 
title of Duke of Northumberland, which " His Majesty" had 
formerly conferred on him. But James III., though no saint, 
had more respect for decent conduct than his father and uncle ; 
the duke ran off into every species of excess, got into debt as 
usual — 

"When Wharton's just, and learns to pay his debts, 
And reputation dwells at Mother Brett's, 
* * * * 

Then, Celia, shall my constant passion cease, 
And my poor suff'ring heart shall be at peace," 

says a satirical poem of the day, called " The Duke of Whar- 
ton's IF7ie«s" — was faithless to the wife he had lately been 
dying for ; and, in short, such a thorough blackguard, that not 
even the Jacobites could tolerate him, and they turned him out 
of the Holy City till he should learn not to bring dishonor on 
the court of their fictitious sovereign. 

The duke was not the man to be much ashamed of himself, 
though his poor wife may now have begun to think her late 
mistress in the right, and he was probably glad of an excuse 
for another change. At this time, 1727, the Spaniards were 
determined to wrest Gibraltar from its English defenders, and 
were sending thither a powerful army under the command of 
Los Torres. The duke had tried many trades with more or 
less success, and now thought that a little military glory would 
tack on well to his highly honorable biography. At any rate 
there w r as novelty in the din of war, and for novelty he would 
go any where. It mattered little that he should fight against 
his own king and own countrymen: he was not half blackguard 
enough yet, he may have thought ; he had played traitor for 
some time, he would now play rebel outright — the game was 
worth the candle. 

So what does my lord duke do but write a letter (like the 
Chinese behind their mud walls, he was always bold enough 



158 MILITARY GLORY AT GIBRALTAR. 

when well secured under the protection of the post, and was 
more absurd in ink even than in action) to the King of Spain, 
offering him his services as a volunteer against " Gib." Wheth- 
er his Most Catholic Majesty thought him a traitor, a madman, 
or a devoted partisan of his own, does not appear, for without 
waiting for an answer — waiting was always too dull work for 
Wharton — he and his wife set off for the camp before Gibral- 
tar, introduced themselves to the Conde in command, were re- 
ceived with all the honor — let us say honor* — due to a duke, 
and established themselves comfortably in the ranks of the en- 
emy of England. But all the duke's hopes of prowess were 
blighted. He had good opportunities. The Conde de los Tor- 
res made him his aid -de -camp, and sent him daily into the 
trenches to see how matters went on. When a defense of a 
certain Spanish out-work was resolved upon, the duke, from his 
rank, was chosen for the command. Yet in the trenches he got 
no worse wound than a slight one on the foot from a splinter of 
a shell, and this he afterward made an excuse for not fighting 
a duel with swords ; and as to the out-work, the English aban- 
doned the attack, so that there was no glory to be found in the 
defense. He soon grew weary of such inglorious and rather 
dirty work as visiting trenches before a stronghold ; and well 
he might ; for if there be one thing duller than another and less 
satisfactory, it must be digging a hole out of which to kill your 
brother mortals ; and thinking he should amuse himself better 
at the court, he set off for Madrid. Here the king, by way of 
reward for his brilliant services in doing nothing, made him 
colonel aggregate — whatever that may be — of an Irish regi- 
ment ; a very poor aggregate, we should think. But my lord 
duke wanted something livelier than the command of a lot of 
Hispaniolized Milesians ; and having found the military career 
somewhat uninteresting, wished to return to that of politics. 
He remembered with gusto the frolic life of the Holy City, and 
the political excitement in the Chevalier's court, and sent off a 
letter to "His Majesty James III.," expressing, like a rustica- 
ted Oxonian, his penitence for having been so naughty the last 
time, and offering to come and be very good again. It is to 
the praise of the Chevalier de St. George that he had worldly 
wisdom enough not to trust the gay penitent. He was tired, 
as every body else was, of a man who could stick to nothing, 
and did not seem to care about seeing him again. According- 
ly he replied in true kingly style, blaming him for having taken 
up arms against their common country, and telling him in po- 
lite language — as a policeman does a riotous drunkard — that 
he had better go home. The duke thought so too, was not 
at all offended at the letter, and set off, by way of return- 



" L'KCLE HORACE." 150 

ing toward his Penates, for Paris, where he arrived in May, 
1728. 

Horace "Walpole — not the Horace — hut "Uncle Horace," or 
" old Horace," as he was called, was then embassador to the 
court of the Tuileries. Mr. Walpole was one of the Houghton 
" lot," a brother of the famous minister Sir Robert, and 
though less celebrated, almost as able in his time. He had 
distinguished himself in various diplomatic appointments, in 
Spain, at Hanover and the Hague, and having successfully 
tackled Cardinal Fleury, the successor of the Richelieus and 
Mazarins at Paris, he was now in high favor at home. In 
after years he was celebrated for his duel with Chetwynd, 
who, when " Uncle Horace" had in the House expressed a 
hope that the question might be carried, had exclaimed, "I 
hope to see you hanged first !'•' " You hope to see me hang- 
ed first, do you ?" cried Horace, with all the ferocity of the 
Walpoles ; and thereupon, seizing him by the most prominent 
feature of his face, shook him violently. This was matter 
enough for a brace of swords and coffee for four, and Mr. 
Chetwynd had to repent of his remark after being severely 
wounded. In those days our honorable House of Commons 
was as much an arena of wild beasts as the American Senate 
of to-day. 

To this minister our noble duke wrote a hypocritical letter, 
which, as it shows how the man could write penitently, is 
worth transcribing. 

"Lions, June 28, 1728. 

" Sir, — Your excellency will be surpris'd to receive a letter 
from me; but the clemency with which the government of 
England has treated me, which is in a great measure owing 
to your brother's regard to my father's memory, makes me 
hope that you will give me leave to express my gratitude 
for it. 

" Since his present majesty's accession to the throne I have 
absolutely refused to be concerned with the Pretender or any 
of his affairs; and during my stay in Italy have behav'd my- 
self in a manner that Dr. Peters, Mr. Godolphin, and Mr. Mills 
can declare to be consistent with my duty to the present king. 
I was fore'd to go to Italy to get out of Spain, where, if my 
true design had been known, I should have been treated a lit- 
tle severely. 

" I am coming to Paris to put myself entirely under your 
excellency's protection ; and hope that Sir Robert Walpole' s 
good-nature will prompt him to save a family which his gen- 
erosity induced him to spare. If your excellency would per- 
mit me to wait upon you for an hour, I am certain you would 



160 THE DUKES IMPUDENCE. 

be convinc'd of the sincerity of. my repentance for my former 
madness, would become an advocate with his majesty to grant 
me his most gracious pardon, which it is my comfort I shall 
never be required to purchase by any step unworthy of a man 
of honor. I do not intend, in case of the king's allowing me 
to pass the evening of my days under the shadow of his royal 
protection, to see England for some years, but shall remain in 
France or Germany, as my friends shall advise, and enjoy 
country sports till all former stories are buried in oblivion. I 
beg of your excellency to let me receive your orders at Paris, 
which I will send to your hostel to receive. The Dutchess of 
Wharton, who is with me, desires leave to wait on Mrs. Wal- 
pole, if you think proper. I am, etc." 

After this, the embassador could do no less than receive 
him ; but he was somewhat disgusted when on leaving him the 
duke frankly told him — forgetting all about his penitent let- 
ter, probably, or too reckless to care for it — that he was going 
to dine with the Bishop of Rochester — Atterbury himself then 
living in Paris — whose society was interdicted to any subject 
of King George. The duke, with his usual folly, touched 
on other subjects equally dangerous, his visit to Rome, and 
his conversion to Romanism ; and, in short, disgusted the cau- 
tious Mr. Walpole. There is something delightfully impudent 
about all these acts of Wharton's ; and had he only been a 
clown at Drury Lane instead of an English nobleman, he must 
have been successful. As it is, when one reads the petty ha- 
tred and humbug of those days, when liberty of speech was as 
unknown as any other liberty, one can not but admire the im- 
pudence of his Grace of Wharton, and wish that most dukes, 
without being as profligate, would be as free-spoken. 

With six hundred pounds in his pocket, our young Lothario 
now set up house at Rouen, with an establishment " equal," 
say the old-school writers, " to his position, but not to his 
means." In other words, he xmdertook to live in a style for 
which, he could not pay. Twelve hundred a year may be 
enough for a duke, as for any other man, but not for one who 
considers a legion of servants a necessary appendage to his 
position. My lord duke, who was a good French scholai', 
soon found an ample number of friends and acquaintances, and 
not being particular about either, managed to get through his 
half-year's income in a few weeks. Evil consequence : he was 
assailed by duns. French duns have never read their Bible, 
and know nothing about forgiving debtors; " your money first, 
and then my pardon," is their motto. My lord duke soon 
found this out. Still he had an income, and could pay them 



HIGH TREASON. 161 

all off in time. So he drank and was merry, till one fine day 
came a disagreeable piece of news, which startled him con- 
siderably. The government at home had heard of his doings, 
and determined to arraign him for high treason. 

He could expect little else, for had he not actually taken up 
arms against his sovereign ? 

Now Sir Robert Walpole was, no doubt, a bear. He was 
not a man to love or sympathize with ; but he was good- 
natured at bottom. Our "frolic grace" had reason to ac- 
knowledge this. He could not complain of harshness in any 
measures taken against him, and he had certainly no claim 
to consideration from the government he had treated so ill. 
Yet Sir Robert was willing to give him every chance ; and so 
far did he go, that he sent over a couple of friends to him to 
induce him only to ask pardon of the king, with a promise 
that it would be granted. For sure the Duke of Wharton's 
character was anomalous. The same man who had more than 
once humiliated himself when unasked, who had written to 
Walpole's brother the letter we have read, would not now, 
when entreated to do so, write a few lines to that minister to 
ask mercy. Nay, when the gentlemen in question offered to 
be content even with a letter from the duke's valet, he refused 
to allow the man to write. Some people may admire what 
they will believe to be firmness, but when we review the duke's 
character and subsequent acts, we can not attribute this re- 
fusal to any thing but obstinate pride. The consequence of 
this folly was a stoppage of supplies, for as he was accused of 
high treason, his estate was of course sequestrated. He re- 
venged himself by writing a paper, which was published in 
" Mist's Journal," and which, under the cover of a Persian 
tale, contained a species of libel on the government. 

His position was now far from enviable ; and, assailed by 
duns, he had no resource but to humble himself, not before 
those he had offended, but before the Chevalier, to whom he 
wrote in his distress, and who sent him £2000, which he soon 
frittered away in follies. This gone, the duke begged and 
borrowed, for there are some people such fools that they would 
rather lose a thousand pounds to a peer than give sixpence to 
a pauper, and many a tale was told of the artful manner in 
which his grace managed to cozen his friends out of a louis or 
two. His ready wit generally saved him. 

Thus on one occasion an Irish toady invited him to dinner ; 
the duke talked of his wardrobe, then sadly defective ; what 
suit should he wear ? The Hibernian suggested black velvet. 
" Could you recommend a tailor ?" " Certainly." Snip came, 
an expensive suit was ordered, put on, and the dinner taken. 



162 LAST EXTREMITIES. 

In due course the tailor called for his money. The duke was 
not a bit at a loss, though he had but a few francs to his name. 
"Honest man," quoth he, "you mistake the matter entirely. 
Carry the bill to Sir Peter ; for know that whenever I consent 
to wear another man's livery, my master pays for the clothes," 
and inasmuch as the dinner-giver was an Irishman, he did act- 
ually discharge the account. 

At other times he would give a sumptuous entertainment, 
and in one way or another induce his guests to pay for it. He 
was only less adroit in coining excuses than Theodore Hook, 
and had he lived a century later, we might have a volume full 
of anecdotes to give of his ways and no means. Meanwhile 
his unfortunate duchess was living on the charity of friends, 
while her lord and master, when he could get any one to pay 
for a band, was serenading young ladies. Yet he was jealous 
enough of his wife at times, and once sent a challenge to a 
Scotch nobleman, simply because some silly friend asked him 
if he had forbidden his wife to dance with the lord. He went 
all the way to Flanders to meet his opponent ; but, perhaps 
fortunately for the duke, Marshal Berwick arrested the Scotch- 
man, and the duel never came off. 

Whether he felt his end approaching, or whether he was 
sick of vile pleasures which he had recklessly pursued from the 
age of fifteen, he now, though only thirty years of age, retired 
for a time to a convent, and was looked on as a penitent and 
devotee. Penury, doubtless, cured him in a measure, and 
poverty, the porter of the gates of heaven, warned him to 
look forward beyond a life he had so shamefully misused. But 
it was only a temporary repentance ; and when he left the re- 
ligious house, he again rushed furiously into every kind of dis- 
sipation. 

At length, utterly reduced to the last extremities, he be- 
thought himself of his colonelcy in Spain, and determined to 
set out-to join his regiment. The following letter from a friend 
who accompanied him will best show what circumstances he 
was in : 

"Paris, June 1st, 1729. 

" Dear Sir, — I am just returned from the Gates of Death, to 
return you Thanks for your last kind Letter of Accusations, 
which I am persuaded was intended as a seasonable Help to 
my Recollection, at a Time that it w r as necessary for me to 
send an Inquisitor General into my Conscience, to examine and 
settle all the Abuses that ever were committed in that little 
Court of Equity ; but I assure you, your long Letter did not 
lay so much my Faults as my Misfortunes before me, which 
believe me, dear , have fallen as heavy and as thick upon 



SAD DAYS IN PARIS. 163 

nie as the Shower of Hail upon us two in E Forest, and 

has left me much at a Loss which way to turn myself. The 
Pilot of the Ship I embarked in, who industriously ran upon 
every Rock, has at last split the Vessel, and so much of a sud- 
den, that the whole Crew, I mean his Domesticks, are all left 
to swim for their Lives, without one friendly Plank to assist 
them to Shore. In short, he left me sick, in Debt, and with- 
out a Penny ; but as I begin to recover, and have a little Time 
to think, I can't help considering myself, as one whisk'd up 
behind a Witch upon a Broomstick, and hurried over Mount- 
ains and Dales through confus'd Woods and thorny Thickets, 
and when the Charm is ended, and the poor Wretch dropp'd 
in a Desart, he can give no other Account of his enchanted 
Travels, but that he is much fatigued in Body and Mind, his 
Cloaths torn, and worse in all other Circumstances, without 
being of the least Service to himself or any body else. But I 
will follow your Advice with an active Resolution, to retrieve 
my bad Fortune, and almost a Year miserably misspent. 

" But notwithstanding what I have suffered, and what my 
Brother Mad-man has done to undo himself, and every body 
who was so unlucky to have the least Concern with him, I 
could not but be movingly touch'd at so extraordinary a Vicis- 
situde of Fortune, to see a great Man fallen from that shining 
Light, in which I beheld him in the House of Lords, to such a 
Degree of Obscurity, that I have observ'd the meanest Com- 
moner here decline, and the Few he would sometimes fasten 
on, to be tired of his Company ; for you know he is but a bad 
Orator in his Cups, and of late he has been but seldom sober. 

" A week before he left Paris, he was so reduced, that he 
had not one single Crown at Command, and was forc'd to 
thrust in with any Accpiaintance for a Lodging : Walsh and I 
have had him by Turns, all to avoid a Crowd of Duns, which 
he had of all Sizes, from Fourteen hundred Livres to Four, 
who hunted him so close, that he was forced to retire to some 
of the neighboring Villages for Safety. I, sick as I was, hur- 
ried about Paris to raise Money, and to St. Germain's to get 
him Linen ; I bought him one Shirt and a Cravat, which with 
500 Livres, his whole Stock, he and his Duchess, attended by 
one Servant, set out for Spain. All the News I have heard of* 
them since is that a Day or two after, he sent for Captain 
Brierly, and two or three of his Domesticks, to follow him ; 
but none but the Captain obey'd the Summons. Where they 
are now, I can't tell ; but fear they must be in great Distress 
by this time, if he has no other Supplies ; and so ends my Mel- 
ancholy Story. I am, etc." 



lu-l wharton's death in a berxardine convent. 

Still his good-humor did not desert him ; he joked about 
their poverty on the road, and wrote an amusing account of 
their journey to a friend, winding up with the well-known 
lines : 

"Be kind to my 'remains, and oh ! defend, 
Against your judgment, your departed friend." 

His mind was as vigorous as ever, in spite of the waste 
of many debauches ; and when recommended to make a new 
translation of " Telemachus," he actually devoted one whole 
day to the work ; the next he forgot all about it. In the same 
manner he began a play on the story of Mary Queen of Scots, 
and Lady M. W. Montagu wrote an epilogue for it, but the 
piece never got beyond a few scenes. His genius, perhaps, 
was not for either poetry or the drama. His mind was a keen, 
clear one, better suited to argument and to grapple tough po- 
lemic subjects. Had he but been a sober man, he might have 
been a fair, if not a great writer. The " True Briton," with 
many faults of license, shows what his capabilities were. His 
absence of moral sense may be guessed from the fact that in a 
poem on the preaching of Atterbury, he actually compares the 
bishop to our Savior himself! 

At length he reached Bilboa and his regiment, and had to 
live on the meagre pay of eighteen pistoles a month. The 
Duke of Ormond, then an exile, took pity on his wife, and sup- 
ported her for a time : she afterward rejoined her mother at 
Madrid. 

Meanwhile, the year 1730 brought about a salutary change 
in the duke's morals. His health was fast giving way from 
the effects of divers excesses ; and there is nothing like bad 
health for purging a bad soul. The end of a misspent life was 
fast drawing near, and he could only keep it up by broth with 
eggs beaten up in it. He lost the use of his limbs, but not of 
his gayety. In the mountains of Catalonia he met with a min- 
eral spring which did him some good ; so much, in fact, that 
he was able to rejoin his regiment for a time. A fresh attack 
sent him back to the waters ; but on his way he was so vio- 
lently attacked that he was forced to stop at a little village. 
Here he found himself without the means of going farther, and 
in the worst state of health. The monks of a Bernardine con- 
vent took pity on him and received him into their house. He 
grew worse and worse; and in a week died on the 31st of 
May, without a friend to pity or attend him, among strangers, 
and at the early age of thirty-two. 

Thus ended the life of one of the cleverest fools that have 
ever disgraced our peerage. 



LORD HERVEY. 

The village of Kensington was disturbed in its sweet repose 
one day, more than a century ago, by the rumbling of a pon- 
derous coach and six, with four outriders and two equerries 
kicking up the dust ; while a small body of heavy dragoons 
rode solemnly after the huge vehicle. It waded, with in- 
glorious struggles, through a deep mire of mud, between the 
Palace and Hyde Park, until the cortege entered Kensington 
Park, as the gardens were then called, and began to track the 
old road that led to the red-brick structure to which William 
III. had added a higher story, built by Wren. There are two 
roads by which coaches could approach the house : " one," as the 
famous John, Lord Hervey, wrote to his mother, " so convex, 
the other so concave, that, by this extreme of faults, they agree 
in the common one of being, like the high-road, impassable." 
The rumbling coach, with its plethoric steeds, toils slowly on, 
and reaches the dismal pile, of which no association is so pre- 
cious as that of its having been the birth-place of our loved Vic- 
toria Regina. All around, as the emblazoned carriage impress- 
ively veers roiind into the grand entrance, savors of William 
and Mary, of Anne, of Bishop Burnet and Harley, Atterbury 
and Bolingbroke. But those were pleasant days compared to 
those of the second George, whose return from Hanover in this 
mountain of a coach is now described. 

The panting steeds are gracefully curbed by the state coach- 
man in his scarlet livery, with his cocked hat and gray Avig un- 
derneath it : now the horses are foaming and reeking as if 
they had come from the world's end to Kensington, and yet 
they have only been to meet King George on his entrance into 
London, which he has reached from Helvoetsluys, on his way 
from Hanover, in time, as he expects, to spend his birthday 
among his English subjects. 

It is Sunday, and repose renders the retirement of Kensing- 
ton and its avenues and shades more sombre than ever. Sub- 
urban retirement is usually so. It is noon ; and the inmates 
of Kensington Palace are just coming forth from the chapel in 
the palace. The coach is now stopping, and the equerries are 
at hand to offer their respectful assistance to the diminutive 
figure that, in full Field-marshal regimentals, a cocked hat stuck 
crosswise on his head, a sword dangling even down to his 



166 GEORGE II. ARRIVING FROM HANOVER. 

heels, ungraciously heeds them not, but stepping down, as the 
great iron gates are thrown open to receive him, looks neither 
like a king nor a gentleman. A thin, worn face, in which 
weakness and passion are at once pictured ; a form buttoned 
and padded up to the chin ; high Hessian boots without a 
wrinkle ; a sword and a swagger, no more constituting him the 
military character than the " your majesty" from every lip can 
make a poor thing of clay a king. Such was George II. : brutal 
even to his submissive wife. Stunted by nature, he was insig- 
nificant in form, as he was petty in character ; not a trace of 
royalty could be found in that silly, tempestuous physiognomy, 
with its hereditary small head : not an atom of it in his made- 
up, paltry little presence ; still less in his bearing, language, or 
qualities. 

The queen and her court have come from chapel, to meet 
the royal absentee at the great gate : the consort, who was to 
his gracious majesty like an elder sister rather than a wife, 
bends down, not to his knees, but yet she bends, to kiss the 
hand of her royal husband. She is a fair, fat woman, no lon- 
ger young, scarcely comely ; but with a charm of manners, a 
composure, and a savoir faire that causes one to regard her 
as mated, not matched to the little creature in that cocked 
hat, which he does not take off even when she stands before 
him. The pair, nevertheless, embrace ; it is a triennial cere- 
mony performed when the king goes or returns from Hanover, 
but suffered to lapse at other times ; but the condescension is 
too great ; and Caroline ends, where she began, " gluing her 
lips" to the ungracious hand held out to her in evident ill- 
humor. 

They turn, and walk through the court, then up the grand 
staircase, into the queen's apartment. The king has been 
swearing all the way at England and the English, because he 
has been obliged to return from Hanover, where the German 
mode of life and new mistresses w r ere more agreeable to him 
than the English customs and an old wife. He displays, there- 
fore, even on this supposed happy occasion, one of the worst 
outbreaks of his insufferable temper, of which the queen is the 
first victim. All the company in the palace, both ladies and 
gentlemen, are ordered to enter : he talks to them all, but to 
the queen he says not a word. 

She is attended by Mrs. Clayton, afterward Lady Sundon, 
whose lively manners and great good-temper and good-will — 
lent out like leasehold to all, till she saw what their friendship 
might bring — are always useful at these trlstes rencontres. 
Mrs. Clayton is the amalgamating substance between chemical 
agents which have, of themselves, no cohesion ; she covers 




A SCENE BEFORE KENSINGTON PALACE — GEORGE II. AND QUEEN CAROLINE. 



LADY SUFFOLK. 169 

with address what is awkward ; she smooths down with 
something pleasant what is rude ; she turns off — and her office 
in that respect is no sinecure at that court — what is indecent, 
so as to keep the small majority of the company who have re- 
spectable notions in good humor. To the right of Queen 
Caroline stands another of her majesty's household, to whom 
the most deferential attention is paid by all present : neverthe- 
less, she is the queen of the court, but not the queen of the royal 
master of that court. It is Lady Suffolk, the mistress of King- 
George II., and long mistress of the robes to Queen Caroline. 
She is now past the bloom of youth, but her attractions are 
not in their wane ; but endured until she had attained her 
seventy-ninth year. Of a middle height, well made, extreme- 
ly fair, with very fine light hair, she attracts regard from her 
sweet fresh face, which had in it a comeliness independent of 
regularity of feature. According to her invariable custom, 
she is dressed with simplicity ; her silky tresses are drawn 
somewhat back from her snowy forehead, and fall in long 
tresses on her shoulders, not less transparently white. She 
wears a gown of rich silk, opening in front to display a ^chem- 
isette of the most delicate cambric, which is scarcely less deli- 
cate than her skin. Her slender arms are without bracelets, 
and her taper fingers without rings. As she stands behind the 
queen, holding her majesty's fan and gloves, she is obliged, 
from her deafness, to lean her fair face with its sunny hair first 
to the right 'side, then to the left, with the helpless air of one 
exceedingly deaf — for she had been afflicted with that inrirm- 
ity for some years ; yet one can not say whether her appeal- 
ing looks, wliich seem to say, " Enlighten me, if you please" — 
and the sort of softened manner in which she accepts civilities 
which she scarcely comprehends, do not enhance the wonder- 
ful charm which drew every one who knew her toward this 
frail, but passionless woman. 

The queen forms the centre of the group. Caroline, daugh- 
ter of the Marquis of Brandenburgh-Anspach, notwithstanding 
her residence in England of many years, notwithstanding her 
having been, at the era at which this biography begins, ten 
years its queen — is still Gei'man in every attribute. She re- 
tains, in her fair and comely face, traces of having been hand- 
some ; but her skin is deeply scarred by the cruel small-pox. 
She is now at that time of life when Sir Robert Walpole even 
thought it expedient to reconcile her to no longer being an 
object of attraction to her royal consort. As a woman, she 
has ceased to be attractive to a man of the character of George 
II. ; but, as a queen, she is still, as far as manners are concern- 
ed, incomparable. As she turns to address various members 

H 



170 SIR ROBERT WALPOLE. 

of the assembly, her style is full of sweetness as well as of 
courtesy ; yet on other occasions she is majesty itself. The 
tones of her voice, with its still foreign accent, are most capti- 
vating; her eyes penetrate into every countenance on which 
they rest. Her figure, plump and matronly, has lost much of 
its contour ; but is well suited for her part. Majesty in wom- 
an should be embonpoint. Her hands are beautifully white, 
and faultless in shape. The king always admired her bust; 
and it is, therefore, by royal command, tolerably exposed. Her 
fair hair is upraised in full short curls over her brow ; her 
dress is rich, and distinguished in that respect from that of the 
Countess of Suffolk. "Her good Howard" — as she was wont 
to call her when, before her elevation to the peerage, she was 
lady of the bedchamber to Caroline, had, when in that capacity, 
been often subjected to servile offices, which the queen, though 
apologizing in the sweetest manner, delighted to make her 
perform. " My good Howard" having one clay placed a hand- 
kerchief on the back of her royal mistress, the king, who half 
worshiped his intellectual wife, pulled it off in a passion, say- 
ing, " Because you have an ugly neck yourself, you hide the 
queen's !" All, however, that evening was smooth as ice, and 
perhaps as cold also. The company are quickly dismissed, 
and the king, who has scarcely spoken to the queen, retires to 
his closet, where he is attended by the subservient Caroline, 
and by two other persons. 

Sir Robert Walpole, prime minister, has accompanied the 
king, in his carriage, from the very entrance of London, where 
the famous statesman met him. He is now the privileged 
companion of their majesties, in their seclusion for the rest of 
the evening. | His cheerful face, in its full evening disguise of 
wig and tie, his invariable good-humor, his frank manners, his 
wonderful sense, his views, more practical than elevated, suffi- 
ciently account for the influence which this celebrated minister 
obtained over Queen Caroline, and the readiness of King 
George to submit to the tie. But Sir Robert's great source 
of ascendency was his temper. Never was there in the annals 
of our country a minister so free of access : so obliging in giv- 
ing, so unoffending when he refused ; so indulgent and kind to 
those dependent on him; so generous, so faithful to his friends, 
so forgiving to his foes. This was his character under one 
phase: even his adherents sometimes blamed his easiness of 
temper ; the impossibility in his nature to cherish the remem- 
brance of a wrong, or even to be roused by an insult. But, 
while such were the amiable traits of his character, history has 
its lists of accusations against him for corruption of the most 
shameless description. The end of this veteran statesman's- 



LORD IIERVEY. 171 

career is well known. The fraudulent contracts which he 
gave, the peculation and profusion of the secret service money, 
his undue influence at elections, brought around his later life 
a storm, from which he retreated into the Upper House, when 
created Earl of Orford. It was before this timely retirement 
from oflice that he burst forth in these words : " I oppose 
nothing ; give in to every thing ; am said to do every thing, 
and to answer for every thing ; and yet, God knows, I dare 
not do what I think is right." 

With his public capacity, however, we have not here to do : 
it is in his character of a courtier that we view him following 
the queen and king. His round, complacent face, with his 
small glistening eyes, arched eyebrows, and with a mouth 
ready to break out aloud into a laugh, are all subdued into a 
respectful gravity as he listens to King George grumbling at 
the necessity for his return home. No "English cook could 
dress a dinner ; no English cook could select a dessert ; no En- 
glish coachman could drive, nor English jockey ride ; no En- 
glishman — such were his habitual taunts — knew how to come 
into a room ; no Englishwoman understood how to dress her- 
self. The men, he said, talked of nothing but their dull poli- 
tics, and the women of nothing but their ugly clothes. Where- 
as, in Hanover, all these things were at perfection : men were 
patterns of politeness and gallantry ; women, of beauty, wit, 
and entertainment. His troops there were the bravest in the 
world ; his manufacturers the most ingenious ; his people, the 
happiest : in Hanover, in short, plenty reigned, riches flowed, 
arts flourished, magnificence abounded, every thing was in 
abundance that could make a prince great, or a people blessed. 

There was one standing behind the queen who listened to 
these outbreaks of the king's bilious temper, as he called it, 
with an apparently respectful solicitude, but with the deepest 
disgust in his heart. A slender, elegant figure, in a court suit, 
faultlessly and carefully perfect in that costume, stands behind 
the queen's chair. It is Lord Hervey. His lofty forehead, his 
features, which have a refinement of charactei', his well-turned 
mouth, and full and dimpled chin, form his claims to that 
beauty which won the heart of the lovely Mary Lepel ; while 
the someAvhat thoughtful and pensive expression of his physi- 
ognomy, Avhen in repose, indicated the sympathizing, yet, at 
the same time, satirical character of one who won the affec- 
tions, perhaps unconsciously, of the amiable Princess Caroline, 
the favorite daughter of George II. 

A general air of languor, ill concealed by the most studied 
artifice of countenance, and even of posture, characterizes Lord 
Hervey. He would have abhorred robustness ; for he belong- 



172 A SET OF FINE GENTLEMEN. 

ed to the clique then called Maccaronis ; a set of fine gentle- 
men, of whom the present world would not be worthy, tricked 
out for show, fitted only to drive out fading majesty in a state 
coach ; exquisite in every personal appendage, too fine for the 
common usages of society ; point-device, not only in every curl 
and ruffle, but in every attitude and step ; men with full satin 
roses on their shining shoes ; diamond tablet rings on their 
forefingers ; with snuff-boxes, the worth of which might al- 
most purchase a farm ; lace worked by the delicate fingers 
of some religious recluse of an ancestress, and taken from an 
altar-cloth ;, old point-lace, dark as coffee-water could make it; 
with embroidered waistcoats, wreathed in exquisite tambour- 
work round each capacious lappet and pocket ; Avith cut steel 
buttons that glistened beneath the courtly wax-lights : with 
these and fifty other small but costly characteristics that estab- 
lished the reputation of an aspirant Maccaroni. Lord Hervey 
was, in truth, an effeminate creature : too dainty to walk ; too 
precious to commit his frame to horseback ; and prone to imi- 
tate the somewhat recluse habits which German rulers intro- 
duced within the court : he was disposed to candle-light pleas- 
ures and cockney diversions ; to Marybone and the Mall, and 
shrinking from the athletic and social recreations which, like 
so much that was manly and English, were confined almost to 
the English squire pur ei simple after the Hanoverian acces- 
sion ; when so much degeneracy for a while obscured the En- 
glish character, debased its tone, enervated its best races, vili- 
fied its literature, corrupted its morals, changed its costume, 
and degraded its architecture. 

Beneath the effeminacy of the Maccaroni, Lord Hervey was 
one of the few who united to intense finery in every minute 
detail, an acute and cultivated intellect. To perfect a Macca- 
roni it was in truth advisable, if not essential, to unite some 
smattering of learning, a pretension to wit, to his super-dan- 
dyism ; to be the author of some personal squib, or the trans- 
lator of some classic. Queen Caroline was too cultivated her- 
self to sutler fools about her, and Lord Hervey was a man after 
her own taste : as a courtier he was essentially a fine gentle- 
man ; and, more than that, he could be the most delightful 
companion, the most sensible adviser, and the most winning 
friend in the court. His ill health, which he carefully conceal- 
ed, his fastidiousness, his ultra delicacy of habits, formed an 
agreeable contrast to the coarse robustness of "Sir Robert," 
and constituted a relief after the society of the vulgar, strong- 
minded minister, who was born for the hustings, and the House 
of Commons rather than for the courtly drawing-room. 

John Lord Hervey, long vice-chamberlain to Queen Caro- 



AN ECCENTRIC EACE, 173 

line, was, like Sir Robert Walpole, descended from a common- 
er's family, one of those good old squires who lived, as Sir 
Henry Wotton says, " without lustre and without obscurity." 
The Duchess of Marlborough had procured the elevation of 
the Herveys of Ickworth to the peerage. She happened to be 
intimate with Sir Thomas Felton, the father of Mrs. Hervey, 
afterward Lady Bristol, Avhose husband, at first created Lord 
Hervey, and afterward Earl of Bristol, expressed his obliga- 
tions by retaining as his motto, when raised to the peerage, 
the words " Je n'oublieray jamais," in allusion to the service 
done him by the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough. 

The Herveys had always been an eccentric race ; and the 
classification of "men, women, and Herveys," by Lady Mary 
Wortley Montagu, was not more witty than true. There was 
in the whole race an eccentricity which bordered on the ridic- 
ulous, but did not imply want of sense or of talent. Indeed 
this third species, " the Herveys," w 7 ere more gifted than the 
generality of " men and women." The father of Lord Hervey 
had been a country gentleman of good fortune, living at Ick- 
worth, near Bury in Suffolk, and representing the town in Par- 
liament, as his father had before him, until raised to the peer- 
age. Before that elevation he had lived on in his own county, 
uniting the character of the English squire, in that fox-hunting 
county, with that of a perfect gentleman, a scholar, and a most 
admirable member of society. He was a poet also, affecting 
the style of Cowley, who wrote an elegy upon his uncle, Wil- 
liam Hervey, an elegy compai'ed to Milton's "Lycidas" in im- 
agery, music, and tenderness of thought. The shade of Cow- 
ley, whom Charles II. pronounced, at his death, to be " the 
best man in England," haunted this peer, the first Earl of Bris- 
tol. He aspired especially to the poet's witj and the ambition 
to be a wit flew' like wildfire among his family, especially in- 
fecting his two sons, Carr, the elder brother of the subject of 
this memoir, and Lord Hervey. 

It would have been well could the Earl of Bristol have trans- 
mitted to his sons his other qualities. He w T as pious, moral, 
affectionate, sincere; a consistent Whig Of the old school, and, 
as such, disapproving of Sir Robert Walpole, of the standing 
army, the corruptions, and that doctrine of expediency so uu- 
blushingly avowed by the ministers. 

Created Earl of Bristol in 1714, the heir-apparent to his ti- 
tles and estates was the elder brother, by a former marriage, 
of John, Lord Hervey ; the dissolute, clever, whimsical Carr, 
Lord Hervey. Pope, in one of his satirical appeals to the sec- 
ond Lord Hervey, speaks of his friendship with Carr, " whose 
early death deprived the family" (of Hervey) " of as much wit 



1 74 A FRAGILE BOY. 

and honor as he left behind him in any part of it." The toil 
was a family attribute, but the honor was dubious : Carr was 
as deistical as any Maccaroni of the day, and, perhaps, more 
dissolute than most : in one respect he has left behind him a 
celebrity which may be as questionable as his wit, or his hon- 
or ; he is reputed to be the father of Horace Walpole, and if 
we accept presumptive evidence of the fact, the statement is 
clearly borne out, for in his wit, his indifference to religion, to 
say the least, his satirical turn, his love of the world, and his 
contempt of all that was great and good, he strongly resem- 
bles his reputed son ; while the levity of Lady Walpole's char- 
acter, and Sir Robert's laxity and dissoluteness, do not furnish 
any reasonable doubt to the statement made by Lady Louisa 
Stuart, in the introduction to Lord Wharncliffe's "Life of Lady 
Mary Wortley Montagu." Carr, Lord Hervey, died early, and 
his half-brother succeeded him in his title and expectations. 

John, Lord Hervey, was educated first at Westminster 
School, under Dr. Freind, the friend of Mrs. Montagu; thence 
he was removed to Clare Hall, Cambridge : he graduated as a 
nobleman, and became M. A. in 1715. 

At Cambridge Lord Hervey might, have acquired some 
manly prowess ; but he had a mother who was as strange as 
the family into which she had married, and who was passion- 
ately devoted to her son : she evinced her affection by never 
letting him have a chance of being like other English boys. 
When his father was at Newmarket, Jack Hervey, as he was 
called, was to ride a race, to please his father ; but his mother 
could not risk her dear boy's safety, and the race was won by 
a jockey. He was as precious and as fragile as porcelain : the 
elder brother's death made the heir of the Herveys more val- 
uable, more effeminate, and more controlled than ever by his 
eccentric mother. A court was to be his hemisphere, and to 
that all his views, early in life, tended. He went to Hanover 
to pay his court to George. I. : Carr had done the same, and 
had come back enchanted with George, the heir-presumptive, 
who made him one of the lords of the bedchamber. Jack Her- 
vey also returned full of enthusiasm for the Prince of Wales, 
afterward George II., and the princess; and that visit influ- 
enced his destiny. 

He now proposed making the grand tour, which comprised 
Paris, Germany, and Italy. But his mother again interfered : 
she wept, she exhorted, she prevailed. Means were refused, 
and the stripling was recalled to hang about the court, or to 
loiter at Ickworth, scribbling verses, and causing his father 
uneasiness lest he should be too much of a poet, and too little 
of a public man. 



DESCRIPTION OF GEORGE II. '.S FAMILY. 175 

Such was his youth : disappointed by not obtaining a com- 
mission in the Guards, he led a desultory, butterfly-like life ; 
one day at Richmond with Queen Caroline, then Princess of 
Wales ; another, at Pope's villa, at Twickenham ; sometimes 
in the House of Commons, in which he succeeded his elder 
brother as member for Bury ; and, at the period when he has 
been described as forming one of the quartette in Queen Caro- 
line's closet at St. James's, as vice-chamberlain to his partial 
and royal patroness. 

His early marriage with Mary Lepel, the beautiful maid of 
honor to Queen Caroline, insured his felicity, though it did not 
curb his predilections for other ladies. 

Henceforth Lord Hervey lived all the year round in what 
were then called lodgings, that is, apartments appropriated to 
the royal household, or even to others, in St. James's, or at 
Richmond, or at "Windsor. In order fully to comprehend all 
the intimate relations which he had with the court, it is neces- 
sary to present the reader with some account of the family of 
George II. Five daughters had been the female issue of his 
majesty's marriage with Queen Caroline. Three of these prin- 
cesses, the three elder ones, had lived, during the life of George 
I., at St. James's with their grandfather ; who, irritated by the 
differences between him and his son, then Prince of Wales, 
adopted that measure rather as showing his authority than 
from any affection to the young princesses. It was, in truth, 
difficult to say which of these royal ladies was the most unfor- 
tunate. 

Anne, the eldest, had shown her spirit early in life while re- 
siding with George I. ; she had a proud, imperious nature, and 
her temper was, it must be owned, put to a severe test. The 
only time that George I. did the English the honor of choosing 
one of the beauties of the nation for his mistress, was during 
the last year of his reign. The object of his choice was Anne 
Brett, the eldest daughter of the infamous Countess of Mac- 
clesfield by her second husband. The neglect of Savage, the 
poet, her son, was merely one passage in the iniquitous life of 
Lady Macclesfield. Endowed with singular taste and judg- 
ment, consulted by Colley Cibber on every new play he pro- 
duced, the mother of Savage was not only wholly destitute of 
all virtue, but of all shame. One day, looking out of the win- 
dow, she perceived a very handsome man assaulted by some 
bailiffs who were going to arrest him : she paid his debt, re- 
leased, and married him. The hero of this story was Colonel 
Brett, the father of Anne Brett. 

The child of such a mother was not likely to be even decent- 
ly respectable ; and Anne was proud of her disgraceful pre- 



170 AXXE BRETT. — A BITTER CUP. 

eminence and of her disgusting and royal lover. She was dark, 
and her flashing black eyes resembled those of a Spanish beau- 
ty. Ten years after the death of George I., she found a hus- 
band in Sir William Leman, of Northall, and was announced, 
on that occasion, as the half-sister of Richard Savage. 

To the society of this woman, when at St. James's, as " Mis- 
tress Brett," the three princesses were subjected : at the same 
time the Duchess of Kendal, the king's German mistress, oc- 
cupied other lodgings at St. James's. 

Miss Brett was to be rewarded w T ith the coronet of a count- 
ess for her degradation, the king being absent on the occasion 
at Hanover ; elated by her expectations, she took the liberty, 
during his majesty's absence, of ordering a door to be broken 
out of her apartment into the royal garden, where the prin- 
cesses walked. The Princess Anne, not deigning to associate 
with her, commanded that it should be forthwith closed. Miss 
Brett imperiously reversed that order. In the midst of the 
affair, the king died suddenly, and Anne Brett's reign was 
over, and her influence soon as much forgotten as if she had 
never existed. The Princess Anne was pining in the dullness 
of her royal home, when a marriage with the Prince of Orange, 
was proposed for the consideration of his parents. It was a 
miserable match as well as a miserable prospect, for the prince's 
revenue amounted to no more than £12,000 a year; and the 
state and pomp to which the Princess Royal had been accus- 
tomed could not be contemplated on so small a fortune. It 
was still w T orse in point of that poor consideration, happiness. 
The Prince of Orange was both deformed and disgusting in 
his person, though his face was sensible in expression ; and if 
he inspired one idea more strongly than another when he ap- 
peared in his uniform and cocked hat, and spoke bad French, 
or worse English, it was that of seeing before one a dressed- 
up baboon. 

It was a bitter cup for the princess to drink, but she drank 
it ; she reflected that it might be the only way. of quitting a 
court' where, in case of her father's death, she would be de- 
pendent on her brother Frederick, or bn that weak prince's 
strong-minded wife. So she consented, and took the dwarf; 
and that consent was regarded by a grateful people, and by 
all good courtiers, as a "sacrifice for the sake of Protestant 
principles, the House of Orange being, par excellence, at the 
head of the orthodox dynasties of Europe. A dowry of 
£80,000 was forthwith granted by an admiring Commons — 
just double what had ever been given before. That sum was 
happily lying in the exchequer, being the purchase-money of 
some lands in St. Christopher's which had lately been sold ; and 



THE DARLING OF THE FAMILY. 177 

King George was thankful to get rid of a daughter whose 
haughtiness gave him trouble. In person, too, the princess 
royal was not very ornamental to the court. She was ill- 
made, with a propensity to grow fat : her complexion, other- 
wise very fine, was marked with the small-pox ; she had, how- 
ever, a lively, clean look — one of her chief beauties — and a 
certain royalty of manner. 

The Princess Amelia died, as the world thought, single, but 
consoled herself with various love flirtations. The Duke of 
Newcastle made love to her, but her aftections were centred 
on the Duke of Grafton, to whom she was privately married, 
as is confidently asserted. 

The Princess Caroline was the darling of her family. Even 
the king relied on her truth. When there was any dispute, 
he used to say, " Send for Caroline ; she will tell us the right 
story." 

Her fate had its clouds. Amiable, gentle, of unbounded 
charity, with strong aftections, which were not suftered to flow 
in a legitimate channel, she became devotedly attached to 
Lord Hervey: her heart was bound up in him; his death 
drove her into a permanent retreat from the world. No de- 
basing connection existed between them ; but it is misery, it is 
sin enough to love another woman's husband — and that sin, 
that misery, was the lot of the royal and otherwise virtuous 
Caroline. 

The Princess Mary, another victim to conventionalities, was 
united to Frederick, Landgrave of Hesse Cassel ; a barbarian, 
from whom she escaped, whenever she could, to come, with a 
bleeding heart, to her English home. She was, even Horace 
Walpole allows, " of the softest, mildest temper in the world," 
and fondly beloved by her sister Caroline, and by the " Butch- 
er of Culloden," William, Duke of Cumberland. 

Louisa became Queen of Denmark in 1746, after some years' 
marriage to the Crown Prince. " We are lucky," Horace Wal- 
pole Avrites on that occasion, "in the death of kings." 

The two princesses who were still under the paternal roof 
were contrasts. Caroline was a constant invalid, gentle, sin- 
cere, unambitious, devoted to her mother, whose death nearly 
killed her. Amelia affected popularity, and assumed the esprit 
fort — was fond of meddling in polities, and after the death of 
her mother, joined the Bedford faction, in opposition to her fa- 
ther. But both these princesses were outwardly submissive 
when Lord Hervey became the Queen's chamberlain. 

The evenings at St. James's were spent in the same way as 
those at Kensington. 

Quadrille formed her majesty's pastime, and, while Lord 

112 



1*78 EVENINGS AT ST. JAMES'S. 

Hervey played pools of cribbage with the Princess Caroline 
and the maids of honor, the Duke of Cumberland amused him- 
self and the Princess Amelia at " buffet." On Mondays and 
Fridays there were drawing-rooms held ; and these receptions 
took place, very wisely, in the evening. 

Beneath all the show of gayety and the freezing ceremony 
of those stately occasions, there was in that court as much 
misery as family dissensions, or, to speak accurately, family 
hatreds can engender. Endless jealousies, which seem to us 
as frivolous as they were rabid ; and contentions, of which 
even the origin is still unexplained, had long severed the 
queen from her eldest son. George II. had always loved his 
mother: his affection for the unhappy Sophia Dorothea was 
one of the very few traits of goodness in a character utterly 
vulgar, sensual, and entirely selfish. His son, Frederick, Prince 
of Wales, on the other hand, hated his mother. He loved 
neither of his parents ; but the queen had the pre-eminence in 
his aversion. 

The king, during the year 1736, was at Hanover. His re- 
turn was announced, but under circumstances of danger. A 
tremendous storm arose just as he was prepared to embark at 
Helvoetsluys. All London was on the look-out, weather-cocks 
were watched ; tides, winds, and moons formed the only sub- 
jects of conversation ; but no one of his majesty's subjects 
were so demonstrative as the Prince of Wales, and his cheer- 
fulness, and his triumph even, on the occasion, were of course 
resentfully heard of by the queen. 

During the storm, when anxiety had almost amounted to 
fever, Lord Hervey dined with Sir Robert Walpole. Their 
conversation naturally turned on the state of affairs, prospect- 
ively. Sir Robert called the Prince a "poor, weak, irreso- 
lute, false, lying, contemptible wretch." Lord Hervey did not 
defend him, but suggested that Frederick, in case of his fa- 
ther's death, might be more influenced by the queen than he 
had hitherto been. " Zounds, my lord," interrupted Sir Rob- 
ert, " he would tear the flesh off her bones with red-hot irons 
sooner ! The distinctions she shows to you, too, I believe, 
would not be forgotten. Then the notion he has of his great 
riches, and the desire he has of fingering them, would make 
him pinch her, and pinch her again, in order to make her buy 
her ease, till she had not a groat left." 

What a picture of a heartless and selfish character ! The 
next day the queen sent for Lord Hervey, to ask him if he 
knew the particulars of a threat dinner which the prince had 
given to the lord mayor the previous day, while the whole 
country, and the court in particidar, was trembling for the 



AMELIA SOPHIA WALMODEN. 179 

safety of the king, his father. Lord Hervey told her that the 
prince's speech at the dinner was the most ingratiating piece 
of popularity ever heard; the healths, of course, as usual. 
" Heavens J" cried the queen : " popularity always makes me 
sick, but Fritz's popularity makes me vomit ! I hear that yester- 
day, on the prince's side of the House, they talked of the king's 
being cast away with the same sang froid as you would talk 
of an overturn ; and that my good son strutted about as if he 
had been already king. Did you mark the airs with which he 
came into my drawing-room in the morning ?- though he does 
not think fit to honor me with his presence, or ennui me with 
his wife's, of an evening. I felt something here in my throat 
that swelled and half choked me." 

Poor Queen Caroline ! with such a son, and such a husband, 
she must have been possessed of a more than usual share of 
German imperturbability to sustain her cheerfulness, writhing, 
as she often was, under the pangs of a long-concealed disorder, 
of which eventually she died. Even on the occasion of the 
king's return in time to spend his birthday in England, the 
queen's temper had been sorely tried. Nothing had ever 
vexed her more than the king's admiration for Amelia Sophia 
Walraoden, who, after the death of Caroline, was created 
Countess of Yarmouth. Madame Walmoden had been a 
reigning belle among the young married women at Hanover., 
when George II. visited that country in 1735. 'Not that her 
majesty's affections were wounded ; it was her pride that was 
hurt by the idea that people would think that this Hanoverian 
lady had more influence than she had. In other respects the 
king's absence was a relief: she had the eclat of the regency; 
she had the comfort of having the hours which her royal tor- 
ment decreed were to be passed in amusing his dullness, to 
herself; she was free from his "quotidian sallies of temper, 
which," as Lord Hervey relates, " let it be charged by what 
hand it would, used always to discharge its hottest fire, on 
some pretense or other, upon her." 

It is quite true that from the first dawn of his preference for 
Madame Walmoden, the king wrote circumstantial letters of 
fifty or sixty pages to the queen, informing her of every stage 
of the affair ; the queen, in reply, saying that she was only one 
woman, and an old woman, and adding, " that he might love 
more and younger women." In return, the king wrote, " You 
must love the Walmoden, for she loves you f a civil insult, 
which he accompanied with so minute a description of his new 
favorite, that the queen, had she been a painter, might have 
drawn her portrait at a hundred miles' distance. 

The queen, subservient as she seemed, felt the humiliation. 



180 poor queen Caroline! 

Such was the debased nature of George II. that lie not only 
wrote letters unworthy of a man to write, and unfit for a 
woman to read, to his wife, but he desired her to show them 
to Sir Robert Walpole. He used to " tag several paragraphs}" 
as Lord Hervey expresses it, with these words, " Mbntrez ceci, 
et consultez la-dessus de gros homme" meaning Sir Robert. 
But this was only a portion of the disgusting disclosures 
made by the vulgar, licentious monarch to his too degraded 
consort. 

In the bitterness of her mortification the queen considted 
Lord Hervey and Sir Robert as to the possibility of her losing 
her influence, should she resent the king's delay in returning. 
They agreed, that her taking the u fiere turn" would ruin her 
with her royal consort; Sir Robert adding, that if he had a 
niind to flatter her into her ruin, he might talk to her as if she 
were twenty-five, and try to make her imagine that she could 
bring the king back by the apprehension of losing her affec- 
tion. He said it was now too late in her life to try new meth- 
ods ; she must persist in the soothing, coaxing, submissive arts 
which had been practiced with success, and even press his 
majesty to bring this woman to England ! "He taught her," 
says Lord Hervey, "this hard lesson till she wept? Never- 
theless, the queen expressed her gratitude to the minister for 
his advice. " My lord," said Walpole to Hervey, " she laid 
her thanks on me so thick that I found I had gone too far, for 
I am never so much afraid of her rebukes as of her commend- 
ations." 

Such was the state of affairs between this singular couple. 
Nevertheless, the queen, not from attachment to the king, but 
from the horror she had of her son's reigning, felt such fears 
of the prince's succeeding to the throne as she could hardly 
express. He would, she was convinced, do all he could to 
ruin and injure her in case of his accession to the throne. 

The consolation of such a friend as Lord Hervey can easily 
be conceived, when he told her majesty that he had resolved, 
in case the king had been lost at sea, to have retired from her 
service, in order to prevent any jealousy or irritation that 
might arise from his supposed influence with her majesty. 
The queen stopped him short, and said, " No, my lord, I should 
never have suffered that ; you are one of the greatest pleasures 
of my life. But did I love you less than I do, or less like to 
have you about me, I should look upon the suffering you to be 
taken from me as such a meanness and baseness that you should 
not have stirred an inch from me. You," she added, " should 
have gone with me to Somerset House" (which was hers in 
case of the king's death). She then told him she should have 



NOCTURNAL DIVERSIONS OF MAIDS OF HONOR. 181 

begged Sir Robert Walpole on her knees not to have sent in 
bis resignation. 

The animosity of the Prince of Wales to Lord Hervey aug- 
mented, there can be no doubt, his unnatural aversion to the 
queen, an aversion which he evinced early in life. There was 
a beautiful, giddy maid of honor, who attracted not only the 
attention of Frederick, but the rival attentions of other suitors, 
and among them, the most favored was said to be Lord Her- 
vey, notwithstanding that he had then been for some years the 
husband of one of the loveliest ornaments of the court, the 
sensible and virtuous Mary Lepel. Miss Yane became event- 
ually the avowed favorite of the prince, and after giving birth 
to a son, who was christened FitzFrederick Vane, and who 
died in 1736, his unhappy mother died a few months after- 
ward. It is melancholy to read a letter from Lady Hervey to 
Mrs. Howard, portraying the frolic and levity of this once joy- 
ous creature, among the other maids of honor; and her stric- 
tures show at once the unrefined nature of the pranks in which 
they indulged, and her once sobriety of demeanor. 

She speaks, on one occasion, in which, however, Miss Vane 
did not share the nocturnal diversion, of some of the maids of 
honor being out in the winter all night in the gardens at Ken- 
sington — opening and rattling the windows, and trying to 
frighten people out of their wits ; and she gives Mrs. Howard 
a hint that the queen ought to be informed of the way in 
which her young attendants amused themselves. After levi- 
ties such as these, it is not surprising to find poor Miss Vane 
writing to Mrs. Howard, with complaints that she was unjust- 
ly aspersed, and referring to her relatives, Lady Betty Night- 
ingale and Lady Hewet, in testimony of the falsehood of re- 
ports which, unhappily, the event verified. 

The prince, however, never forgave Lord Hervey for being 
his rival Avith Miss Vane, nor his mother for her favors to Lord 
Hervey. In vain did the queen endeavor to reconcile Fritz, as 
she called him, to his father ; nothing could be done in a case 
where the one was all dogged selfishness, and where the other, 
the idol of the opposition party, as the prince had ever been, 
so legere de tcte as to swallow all the adulation offered to him, 
and to believe himself a demigod. " The queen's dread of a 
rival," Horace Walpole remarks, " was a feminine weakness : 
the behavior of her eldest son was a real thorn." Some time 
before his marriage to a princess who was supposed to aug- 
ment his hatred of his mother, Frederick of Wales had con- 
templated an act of disobedience. Soon after his arrival in 
England, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, hearing that he was 
in want of money, had sent to offer him her granddaughter, 



182 MARY LEPEL, LABY HEBVET. 

Lady Diana Spencer, with a fortune of £100,000. The prince 
accepted the young lady, and a day was fixed for his marriage 
in the duchess's lodge at the Great Park, Windsor. But Sir 
Kobert Walpole getting intelligence of the plot, the nuptials 
were stopped. The duchess never forgave either Walpole or 
the royal family, and took an early opportunity of insulting the 
latter. When the Prince of Orange came over to marry the 
princess royal, a sort of boarded gallery was erected from the 
windows of the great drawing-room of that palace, and was 
constructed so as to cross the garden to the Lutheran chapel 
in the Friary, where the duchess lived. The Prince of Orange 
being ill, went to Bath, and the marriage was delayed for some 
weeks. Meantime the windows of Marlborough House were 
darkened by the gallery. " I wonder," cried the old duchess, 
" when my neighbor George will take away bis orange-chest!" 
the structure, with its pent-house roof, really resembling an or- 
ange-chest. 

Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey, whose attractions, great as they 
were, proved insufficient to rivet the exclusive admiration of 
the accomplished Hervey, had become his wife in 1720, some 
time before her husband had been completely enthralled with 
the gilded prison doors of a court. She was endowed with 
that intellectual beauty calculated to attract a man of talent : 
she was highly educated, of great talent ; possessed of savoir 
/aire, infinite good temper, and a strict sense of duty. She 
also derived from her father, Brigadier Lepel, who was of an 
ancient family in Sark, a considerable fortune. Good and cor- 
rect as she was, Lady Hervey viewed with a fashionable com- 
po'sure the various intimacies formed during the course of their 
married life by his lordship. 

The fact is, that the aim of both was not so much to insure 
their domestic felicity as to gratify their ambition. Probably 
they were disappointed in both these aims — certainly in one 
of them : talented, indefatigable, popular, lively, and courteous, 
Lord Hervey, in the House of Commons, advocated in vain, 
in brilliant orations, the measures of Walpole. Twelve years, 
fourteen years elapsed, and he was left in the somewhat sub- 
ordinate position of vice-chamberlain, in spite of that high or- 
der of talents which he possessed, and which would have been 
displayed to advantage in a graver scene. The fact has been 
explained : the queen could not do without him ; she confided 
in him ; her daughter loved him ; and his influence in that court 
was too powerful for Walpole to dispense with an aid so valu- 
able to his own plans. Some episodes in a life thus flittered 
away, until, too late, promotion came, alleviated his existence, 
and gave his wife only a passing uneasiness, if even indeed they 
(Imparted a pang. 



RIVALRY. 1 83 

One of these was liis dangerous passion for Miss Vane ; an- 
other, his platonic attachment to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. 

While he lived on the terms with his wife which is described 
even by the French as being a '•'•Menage de Paris" Lord Her- 
vey found in another quarter the sympathies which, as a hus- 
band, he was too well-bred to require. It is probable that he 
always admired his wife more than any other person, for she 
had qualities that were quite congenial to the tastes of a wit 
and a beau in those times. Lady Hervey was not only singu- 
larly captivating, young, gay, and handsome ; but a complete 
model also of the polished, courteous, high-bred woman of 
fashion. Her manners are said by Lady Louisa Stuart to have 
" had a foreign tinge, which some called affected ; but they 
were gentle, easy, and altogether exquisitely pleasing." She 
was in secret a Jacobite — and resembled in that respect most 
of the fine ladies in Great Britain. Whiggery and Walpolism 
were vulgar: it was haut ton to take offense when James II. 
was anathematized, and quite good taste to hint that some 
people wished well to the Chevalier's attempts : and this way 
of speaking owed its fashion probably to Frederick of Wales, 
whose interest in Flora Macdonald, and whose concern for the 
exiled family, were among the few amiable traits of his dispo- 
sition. Perhaps they arose from a wish to plague his parents, 
rather than from a greatness of character foreign to this prince. 

Lady Hervey was in the bloom of youth, Lady Mary in the 
zenith of her age, when they became rivals : Lady Mary had 
once excited the jealousy of Queen Caroline when Princess of 
Wales. 

"How becomingly Lady Mary is dressed to-night," whis- 
pered George II. to his wife, whom he had called up from the 
card-table to impart to her that important conviction. "Lady 
Mary always dresses well," was the cold and curt reply. 

Lord Hervey had been married about seven years when Lady 
Mary Wortley Montagu reappeared at the court of Queen Car- 
oline, after her long residence in Turkey. Lord Hervey was 
thirty -three years of age; Lady Mary was verging on forty. 
She was still a pretty Avoman, with a piquant, neat-featured 
face ; which does not seem to have done any justice to a mind 
at once masculine and sensitive, nor to a heart capable of be- 
nevolence — capable of strong attachments, and of bitter hatred. 

Like Lady Hervey, she lived with her husband on well-bred 
terms : there existed no quarrel between them ; no avowed 
ground of coldness; it was the icy boundary of frozen feeling 
that severed them ; the sure and lasting though polite destroy- 
er of all bonds, indifference. Lady Mary was full of repartee, 
of poetry, of anecdote, and was not averse to admiration ; but 



184 RELAXATIONS OF THE KOYAL HOUSEHOLD. 

she was essentially a woman of common sense, of views en- 
larged by travel, and of ostensibly good principles. A woman 
of delicacy was not to be found in those days, any more than 
other productions of the nineteenth century : a telegraphic mes- 
sage would have been almost as startling to a courtly ear as 
the refusal of a fine lady to suffer a double entendre. Lady 
Mary was above all scruples, and Lord Hervey, who had lived 
too long with George II. and his queen to have the moral 
sense in perfection, liked her all the better for her courage — 
her merry, licentious jokes, and her putting things down by 
their right names, on which Lady Mary plumed herself: she 
was what they term in the north of England " Emancipated." 
They formed an old acquaintance with a confidential, if not a 
tender friendship ; and that their intimacy was unpleasant to 
Lady Hervey was proved by her refusal — when, after the grave 
had closed over Lord Hervey, late in life, Lady Mary ill, and 
broken down by age, returned to die in England — to resume 
an acquaintance which had been a painful one to her. 

Lord Hervey was a martyr to illness of an epileptic charac- 
ter ; and Lady Mary gave him her sympathy. She was some- 
Avhat of a doctor — and being older than her friend, may have 
had the art of soothing sufferings, which were the worse be- 
cause they were concealed. While he writhed in pain, he was 
obliged to give vent to his agony by alleging that an attack of 
cramp bent him double : yet he lived by rule — a rule harder to 
adhere to than that of the most conscientious homeopath in the 
present day. In the midst of court gayeties and the duties of 
office, he thus wrote to Dr. Cheyne : 

..." To let you know that I continue one of your most pious 
votaries, and to tell you the method I am in. In the first 
place, I never take wine nor malt drink, nor any liquid but 
water and milk-tea ; in the next, I eat no meat but the whitest, 
youngest, and tenderest, nine times in ten nothing but chicken, 
and never more than the quantity of a small one at a meal. 
I seldom eat any supper, but if any, nothing absolutely but 
bread and water ; two days in the Aveek I eat no flesh ; my 
breakfast is dry biscuit, not sweet, and green tea ; I have left 
off butter as bilious ; I eat no salt, nor any sauce but bread- 
sauce." 

Among the most cherished relaxations of the royal house- 
hold were visits to Twickenham, while the court was at Rich- 
mond. The River Thames, which has borne on its waves so 
much misery in olden times — which Avas the highway from the 
Star-chamber to the Tower — which has been belabored in our 
days with so much wealth, and sullied with so much impurity ; 
that river, whose current is one hour rich as the stream of a 




POPE AT HIS VILLA — DISTINGUISHED VISITOIiS. 



BACO^'a OPINION OF TWICKENHAM. 187 

gold river, the next hour foul as the pestilent church-yard — 
was then, especially between Richmond and Teddington, a 
glassy, placid stream, reflecting on its margin the chestnut- 
trees of stately Ham, and the reeds and wild flowers which 
grew undisturbed in the fertile meadows of Petersham. 

Lord Hervey, with the ladies of the court, Mrs. Howard as 
.their chaperon, delighted in being wafted to that village, so 
rich in names which give to Twickenham undying associations 
with the departed great. Sometimes the eifeminate valetudi- 
narian, Hervey, was content to attend the Princess Caroline 
to Marble Hill only, a villa residence built by George II. for 
Mrs. Howard, and often referred to in the correspondence of 
that period. Sometimes the royal barge, with its rowers in 
scarlet jackets, was seen conveying the gay party ; ladies in 
slouched hats, pointed over fair brows in front, with a fold of 
sarcenet round them, terminated in a long bow and ends be- 
hind — with deep falling mantles over dresses never cognizant 
of crinoline : gentlemen, with cocked hats, their bag-wigs and 
ties appearing behind; and beneath their puce-colored coats, 
delicate silk tights and gossamer stockings were visible, as they 
trod the mossy lawn of the Palace Gardens at Richmond, or, 
followed by a tiny greyhound, prepared for the lazy pleasures 
of the day. 

Sometimes the visit was private ; the sickly Princess Caro- 
line had a fancy to make one of the group who are bound to 
Pope's vijfri. Twickenham, where that great little man had, 
since 17 Is, established himself, was pronounced by Lord Ba- 
con to be the finest place in the world for study. " Let Twit- 
nam Park," he wrote to his steward, Thomas Bushell, " which 
I sold in my younger days, be purchased, if possible, for a 
residence for, such deserving persons to study in (since I ex- 
perimentally found the situation of that place much convenient 
for the trial of my philosophical conclusions) — expressed in a 
paper sealed, to the trust — which I myself had put in practice, 
and settled the same by act of parliament, if the vicissitudes 
of fortune had not intervened and prevented me." 

Twickenham continued, long after Bacon had penned this 
injunction, to be the retreat of the poet, the statesman, the 
scholar ; the haven where the retired actress and broken novel- 
ist found peace ; the abode of Henry Fielding, who lived in 
one of the back streets; the temporary refuge, from the world 
of London, of Lady Mary "Wortley Montagu, and the life-long 
home of Pope. 

Let us picture to ourselves a visit from the princess to 
Pope's villa : As the barge, following the gentle bendings of 
the river, nears Twickenham, a richer green, a summer bright- 



188 A VISIT TO POPES VILLA. 

ness, indicates it is approaching that spot of which even Bish- 
op Warburton says that the "beauty of the owner's poetic gen- 
ius appeared to as much advantage in the disposition of these 
romantic materials as in any of his best-contrived poems." 
And the loved toil which formed the quincunx, which perfora- 
ted and extended the grotto until it extended across the road 
to a garden on the opposite side — the toil which showed the 
gentler parts of Pope's better nature — has been respected, and 
its effects preserved. The enameled lawn, green as no other 
grass save that by the Thames side is green, is swept still by 
the light boughs of the famed willow. Every memorial of the 
bard was treasured by the gracious hands into Avhich, after 
1744, the classic spot fell — those of Sir William Stanhope. 

In the subterranean passage this verse appears ; adulatory, 
it must be confessed : 

' ' The humble roof, the garden's scanty line, 
111 suit the genius of the bard divine ; 
But fancy now assumes a fairer scope, 
And Stanhope's plans unfold the soul of Pope." 

It should have been Stanhope's " gold" — a metal which was 
not so abundant, nor indeed so much wanted in Pope's time 
as in our own. 

As the barge is moored close to the low steps which lead 
up from the river to the villa, a diminutive figure, then in its 
prime (if prime it ever had), is seen moving impatiently for- 
ward. By that young-old face, with its large lucid speaking 
eyes that light it up, as does a rushlight in a cavern — by that 
twisted figure with its emaciated legs — by the large, sensible 
mouth, the pointed, marked, well-defined nose — by the wig, or 
hair pushed off in masses from the broad forehead and falling 
behind in tresses — by the dress, that loose, single-breasted 
black coat — by the cambric band and plaited shirt, Avithout a 
frill, but fine and white, for the poor poet has taken infinite 
pains that day in self-adornment — by the delicate ruffle on that 
large thin hand, and still more by the clear, most musical voice 
which is heard welcoming his royal and noble guests, as he 
stands bowing low to the Princess Caroline, and bending to 
kiss hands — by that voice which gained him more especially 
the name of the little nightingale — is Pope at once recognized, 
and Pope in the perfection of his days, in the very zenith of 
his fame. 

One would gladly have been a sprite to listen from some' 
twig of that then stripling willow which the poet had planted 
with his own hand, to the talk of those who chatted for a 
while under its shade, before they went in-doors to an elegant 
dinner at the usual hour of twelve. How delightful to hear, 



THE ESSENCE OF SMALL TALK. 189 

unseen, the repartees of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who 
comes down, it is natural to conclude, from her villa near to 
that of Pope. How fine a study might one not draw of the 
fine gentleman and the wit in Lord Hervey, as he is com- 
manded by the gentle Princess Caroline to sit on her right 
hand ; but his heart is aci'oss the table with Lady Mary ! 
How amusing to observe the dainty but not sumptuous repast 
' contrived with Pope's exquisite taste, but regulated by his 
habitual economy — for his late father, a worthy Jacobite hat- 
ter, erst in the Strand, disdained to invest the fortune he had 
amassed, from the extensive sale of cocked hats, in the Funds, 
over which a Hanoverian stranger ruled ; but had lived on his 
capital of £20,000, as spendthrifts do (without either moral, 
religious, or political reasons), as long as it lasted him; yet he 
was no spendthrift. Let us look, therefore, with a liberal eye, 
noting, as we stand, how that fortune, in league with nature, 
who made the poet crooked, had maimed two of his fingers, 
such time as, passing a bridge, the poor little poet was over- 
turned into the river, and he would have been drowned, had 
not the postillion broken the coach window and dragged the 
tiny body through the aperture. We mark, however, that he 
generally contrives to hide this defect, as he would fain have 
hidden every other from the lynx eyes of Lady Mary, Avho 
knows him, however, thoroughly, and reads every line of that 
poor little heart of his, enamored of her as it was. 

Then the conversation ! How gladly would we catch here 
some drops of what must have been the very essence of small- 
talk, and small-talk is the only tiling fit for early dinners ! Our 
host is noted for his easy address, his engaging manners, his 
delicacy, politeness, and a certain tact he had of showing ev- 
ery guest that he was welcome in the choicest expressions and 
most elegant terms. Then Lady Mary ! how brilliant is her 
slightest turn ! how she banters Pope — how she gives double 
entendre for double entendre to Hervey ! How sensible, yet 
how gay is all she says ; how bright, how cutting, yet how 
polished is the equivoque of the witty, high-bred Hervey ! He 
is happy that day — away from the coarse, passionate king, 
whom he hated with a hatred that burns itself out in his lord- 
ship's " Memoirs ;" away from the somewhat exacting and 
pitiable queen ; away from the hated Pelham, and the rival 
Grafton. 

And conversation never flags when all, more or less, are 
congenial ; when all are well-informed, well-bred, and resolved 
to please. Yet there is a canker in that whole assembly ; that 
canker is a want of confidence : no one trusts the other ; Lady 
Mary's encouragement of Hervey surprises and shocks the 



190 HEEVEY's affectation and effeminacy. 

Princess Caroline, who loves him secretly ; Hervey's atten- 
tions to the queen of letters scandalize Pope, who soon after- 
ward makes a declaration to Lady Mary. Pope writhes un- 
der a lash, just held over him by Lady Mary's hand. Hervcy 
feels that the poet, though all suavity, is ready to demolish 
him at any moment, if he can ; and the only really happy and 
complacent person of the whole party is, perhaps, Pope's old 
mother, who sits in the room next to that occupied for din- 
ner, industriously spinning. 

This happy state of things came, however, as is often the 
case, in close intimacies, to a painful conclusion. There was 
too little reality, too little earnestness of feeling, for the friend- 
ship between Pope and Lady Mary, including Lord Hervey, to 
last long. His lordship had his affectations, and his effeminate 
nicety was proverbial. One day being asked at dinner if he 
would take some beef, he is reported to have answered, "Beef? 
oh, no ! faugh ! don't you know I never eat beef, nor horse, nor 
curry, nor any of those things ?" Poor man ! it was probably 
a pleasant way of turning off what he may have deemed an as- 
sault on a digestion that could hardly conquer any solid food. 
This affectation offended Lady Mary, whose mot, that there 
were three species, "Men, women, and Herveys," implies a per- 
fect perception of the eccentricities even of her gifted friend, 
Lord Hervey, whose mother's friend she had been, and the ob 
ject of whose admiration she undoubtedly was. 

Pope, who was the most irritable of men, never forgot or 
forgave even the most trifling offense. Lady Bolingbroke truly 
said of him, that he played the politician about cabbages^and 
salads, and every body agrees that he could hardly tolerate the 
wit that was more successful than his own. It was about the 
year 1725 that he began to hate Lord Hervey with such a ha- 
tred as only he could feel ; it was unmitigated by a single touch 
of generosity or of compassion. Pope afterward owned that 
his acquaintance with Lady Mary and with Hervey was discon- 
tinued, merely because they had too much wit for him. To- 
ward the latter end of 1732, "The Imitation of the Second Sat- 
ire of the First Book of Horace," appeared, and in it Pope at- 
tacked Lady Mary with the grossest and most indecent couplet 
ever printed : she was called Sappho, and Heiwey, Lord Fanny ; 
and all the world knew the characters at once. 

In retaliation for this satire, appeared " Verses to the Imita- 
tor of Horace ;" said to have been the joint production of Lord 
Hervey and Lady Mary. This was followed by a piece enti- 
tled " Letter from a Nobleman at Hampton Court to a Doctor 
of Divinity." To this composition Lord Hervey, its sole au- 
thor, added these lines, by way, as it seems, of extenuation. 



pope's qtjaeeel with heevey and lady MAE v. 191 

Pope's first reply waa in a prose letter, on which Dr. John- 
son has passed a condemnation. " It exhibits," he says, "noth- 
ing but tedious malignity." But he was partial to the Her- 
veys, Thomas and Henry Hervey, Lord Hervey's brothers, hav- 
ing been kind to him — " If you call a dog Hervey" he said to 
Boswell, "I shall love him." 

Next came the epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, in which every in- 
firmity and peculiarity of Hervey are handed down in calm, 
cruel irony, and polished verses, to posterity. The verses are 
almost too disgusting to be revived in an age which disclaims 
scurrility. After the most personal rancorous invective, he thus 
writes of Lord Hervey's conversation : 

"His wit all see-saw between this and that — 
Now high, now low — now master up, now miss — 
And he himself one vile antithesis. 

* * * * 

Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the hoard, 

Now trips a lady, and now. struts a lord. 

Eve's tempter, thus the rabbins have expressed — 

A cherub's face — a reptile all the rest. 

Beauty that shocks you, facts that none can trust, 

Wit that can creep, and pride that bites the dust." 

" It is impossible," Mr. Croker thinks, " not to admire, how- 
ever Ave may condemn, the art by which acknowledged wit, 
beauty, and gentle manners, the queen's favor, and even a val- 
etudinary diet, are travestied into the most odious offenses." 

Pope, in two lines, pointed to the intimacy between Lady 
Mary and Lord Hervey : 

"Once, and but once, this heedless youth was hit, 
And liked that dangerous thing, a female wit." 

Nevertheless, he afterward pretended that the name Sappho 
was not applied to Lady Mary, but to women in general ; and 
acted with a degree of mean prevarication which greatly add- 
ed to the amount of his oifense. 

The quarrel with Pope was not the only attack which Lord 
Hervey had to encounter. Among the most zealous of his foes 
was Pulteney, afterward Lord Bath, the rival of Sir Robert 
Walpole, and the confederate with Bolingbroke in opposing 
that minister. The " Craftsman," a paper in the Whig inter- 
est, contained an attack on Pulteney, written with great abil- 
ity, by Hervey. It provoked a Reply from Pulteney. In this 
composition he spoke of Hervey as " a thing below contempt," 
and ridiculed his personal appearance in the grossest terms. 
A duel was the result, the parties meeting behind Arlington 
House, in Piccadilly, where Mr. Pulteney had the satisfaction 
of almost running Lord Hervey through with his sword. Luck- 
ily the poor man slipped down, so the blow was evaded, and 



192 "the death of lord hervey: a drama.'*" 

the seconds interfered : Mr. Pulteney then embraced Lord Her- 
vey, and expressing his regret for their quarrel, declared that 
he would never again, either in speech or writing, attack his 
lordship. Lord Hervey only bowed, in silence ; and thus they 
parted. 

The queen having observed what an alteration in the palace 
Lord Hervey's death would cause, he said he could guess how 
it would be, and he produced " The Death of Lord Hervey ; 
or, a Morning at Court ; a Drama :" the idea being taken, it is 
thought, from Swift's verses on his own death, of which Her- 
vey might have seen a surreptitious copy. The following scene 
will give some idea of the plot and structure of this amusing 
little piece. The part allotted to the Princess Caroline is in 
unison with the idea prevalent of her attachment to Lord Her- 
vey: 

ACT I. 
Scene : The Queen's Gallery. The time, nine in the morning. 

Enter the Queen, Princess Emily, Princess Caroline, followe d by Lord 
Lifford, and Mrs. Purcel. 

Queen. Mon Dieu, quelle chaleur ! en verite on e'touffe'. Pray open a lit- 
tle those windows. 

Lord Lifford. Hasa yonr Majesty heara de news ? 

Queen. What news, my dear Lord ? 

Lord Lifford. Dat my Lord Hervey, as he was coming last night to tone, 
was rob and murdered by highwaymen and tron in a ditch. 

Princess Caroline. Eh ! grand Dieu ! 

Queen [striking her hand upon her knee]. Comment est-il veritablement 
mort ? Purcel, my angel, shall I not have a little breakfast ? 

Mrs. Purcel. What would your Majesty please to have ? 

Queen. A little chocolate, my soul, if you give me leave, and a little sour 
cream, and some fruit. {Exit Mrs. Purcel. 

Queen [to Lord Lifford']. Eh bien ! my Lord Lifford, dites-nous un pen 
comment cela est arrive'. I can not imagine what he had to do to be put- 
ting his nose there. Seulement pour un sot voyage avec ce petit mousse, eh 
bien? 

Lord Lifford. Madame, on scait quelque chose de celai de Mon. Maran, 
qui d'abord qu'il a vu les voleurs s'est enfin et venu a grand galoppe a Lon- 
dres, and after dat a wagoner take up the body and put it in his cart. 

Queen {to Princess Emily]. Are you not ashamed, Amalie, to laugh? 

Princess Emily. I only laughed at the cart, mamma. 

Queen. Oh ! that is a very fade plaisanterie. 

Princess Emily. But if I may say it, mamma, I am not very sorry. 

Queen. Oh ! fie done ! Eh bien ! my Lord Lifford ! My God ! where is 
this chocolate, Purcel ? 

As Mr. Croker remarks, Queen Caroline's breakfast-table, 
and her parentheses, reminds one of the card-table conversa- 
tion of Swift : 

"The Dean's dead: (pray what are trumps?) 
Then Lord have mercy on his soul ! 
(Ladies, I'll venture for the vole.) 



QUEEN CAROLINES LAST DRAWING 193 

Six Deans, they say, must bear the pall 
(I wish I knew what king to call.) 

Fragile as was Lord Hervey's constitution, it was his lot to 
witness the death-bed of the queen, for whose amusement he 
had penned the jeu d'esprit just quoted, in which there was, 
perhaps, as much truth as wit. 

The wretched Queen Caroline had, during fourteen years, 
concealed from every one, except Lady Sundon, an incurable 
disorder, that of hernia. In November (1737) she was attack- 
ed with what we should now call English cholera. Dr. Tes- 
sier, her house-physician, was called in, and gave her Daffey's 
elixir, which was not likely to afford any relief to the deep- 
seated cause of her sufferings. She held a drawing-room that 
night for the last time, and played at cards, even cheerfully. 
At length she whispered to Lord Hervey, " I am not able to 
entertain people." " For heaA'en's sake, madam," was the re- 
ply, " go to your room : would to heaven the king would leave 
off talking of the Dragon of Wantley, and release you!" The 
Dragon of Wantley was a burlesque on the Italian opera, by 
Henry Carey, and was the theme of the fashionable world. 

The next day the queen was in fearful agony, very hot, and 
willing to take any thing proposed. Still she did not, even to 
Lord Hervey, avow the real cause of her illness. None of the 
most learned court physicians, neither Mead nor Wilmot, were 
called in. Lord Hervey sat by the queen's bedside, and tried 
to soothe her, while the Princess Caroline joined in begging 
him to give her mother something to relieve her agony. At 
length, in utter ignorance of the case, it was proposed to give 
her some snakeroot, a stimulant, and, at the same time, Sir 
Walter Raleigh's cordial ; so singular was it thus to find that 
great mind still influencing a court. It was that very medi- 
cine which was administered by Queen Anne of Denmark, 
however, to Prince Henry ; that medicine which Raleigh said, 
" would cure him, or any other, of a disease, except in case of 
poison." 

However, Ranby, house-surgeon to the king, and a favorite 
of Lord Hervey's, assuring him that a cordial with this name 
or that name was mere quackery, some usquebaugh was given 
instead, but was rejected by the queen soon afterward. At 
last Raleigh's cordial was administered, but also rejected about 
an hour afterward. Her fever, after taking Raleigh's cordial, 
was so much increased, that she was ordered instantly to be 
bled. 

Then, even, the queen never disclosed the fact that could 
alone dictate the course to be pursued. George II., with more 
feeling than judgment, slept on the outside of the queen's bed 

I 



194 A PAINFUL SCENE. 

all that night ; so that the unhappy invalid could get no rest, 
nor change her position, not daring to irritate the king's tem- 
per. 

Tho next day the queen said touchingly to her gentle, affec- 
tionate daughter, herself in declining health, " Poor Caroline ! 
you are very ill, too ; we shall soon meet again in another 
place." 

Meantime, though the queen declared to every one that she 
was sure nothing could save her, it was resolved to hold a levee. 
The foreign ministers were to come to court, and the king, in 
:he midst of his real grief, did not forget to send word to his 
pages to be sure to have his last new ruffles sewed on the shirt 
he was to put on that day ; a trifle which often, as Lord Her- 
vey remarks, shows more of the real character than events of 
importance, from Avhich one frequently knows no more of a 
person's state of mind than one does of his natural gait from 
his dancing. 

Lady Sundon was, meantime, ill at Bath, so that the queen's 
secret rested alone in her own heart. "I have an ill," she 
said, one evening, to her daughter Caroline, "that nobody 
knows of." Still, neither the princess nor Lord Hervey could 
guess at the full meaning of that sad assertion. 

The famous Sir Hans Sloan e was then called in ; but no 
remedy except large and repeated bleedings was suggested, 
and blisters were put on her legs. There seems to have been 
no means left untried by the faculty to hasten the catastrophe 
— thus working in the dark. 

The king now sat up with her whom he had so cruelly 
wounded in every nice feeling. On being asked, by Lord Her- 
vey, what was to be done in case the Prince of Wales should 
come to inquire after the queen ? he answered in the following 
terms, worthy of his ancestry — worthy of himself. It is diffi- 
cult to say which Avas the most painful scene, that in the cham- 
ber where the queen lay in agony, or without, where the curse 
of family dissensions came like a ghoul to hover near the bed 
of death, and to gloat over the royal corpse. This was the 
royal dictum : " If the puppy should, in one of his impertinent 
airs of duty and affection, dare to come to St. James's, I order 
you to go to the scoundrel, and tell him I wonder at his impu- 
dence for daring to come here ; that he has my orders already, 
and knows my pleasure, and bid him go about his business; 
for his poor mother is not in a condition to see him act his 
false, whining, cringing tricks now, nor am I in a humor to 
bear with his impertinence ; and bid him trouble me with no 
more messages, but get out of my house." 

In the evening, while Lord Hervey sat at tea in the queen's 



THE TRUTH DISCOVERED. 195 

outer apartment with the Duke of Cumberland, a page came 
to the duke to speak to the prince in the passage. It was to 
])refer a request to see his mother. This message was con- 
veyed by Lord Hervey to the king, whose reply was uttered 
in the most vehement rage possible. " This," said he, " is like 
one of his scoundrel tricks; it is just of a piece with his kneel- 
ing down in the dirt before the mob to kiss her hand at the 
coach door when she came home from Hampton Court to see 
the princess, though he had not spoken one word to her during 
her whole visit. I always hated the rascal, but now I hate 
him worse than ever. He wants to come and insult his poor 
dying mother ; but she shall not see him ; you have heard her, 
and all my daughters have heard her, very often this year at 
Hampton Court desire me if she should be ill, and out of her 
senses, that I would never let him come near her ; and while 
she had her senses she was sure she should never desire it. 
No, no! he shall not come and act any of his silly plays here." 

In the afternoon the queen said to the king, she wondered 
the Griff, a nickname she gave to the prince, had not sent to 
inquire after her yet; it would be so like one of his paroitres. 
" Sooner or later," she added, " I am sure we shall be plagued 
with some message of that sort, because he will think it will 
have a good air in the world to ask to see me ; and, perhaps, 
hopes I shall be fool enough to let him come, and give him the 
pleasure of seeing the last breath go out of my body, by which 
means he would have the joy of knowing I was dead five min- 
utes sooner than he could know it in Pall Mall." 

She afterward declared that nothing would induce her to see 
him except the king's absolute commands. " Therefore, if I 
grow worse," she said, " and should I be weak enough to talk 
of seeing him, I beg you, sir, to conclude that I doat — or rave." 

The king, who had long since guessed at the queen's dis- 
ease, urged her now to permit him to name it to her physi- 
cians. She begged him not to do so ; and for the first time, 
and the last, the unhappy woman spoke peevishly and warm- 
ly. Then Ranby, the house-surgeon, who had by this time 
discovered the truth, said, "There is no more time to be lost; 
your majesty has concealed the truth too long; I beg another 
surgeon may be called in immediately." 

The queen, who had, in her passion, started up in her bed, 
lay down again, turned her head on the other side, and, as the 
king told Lord Hervey, " shed the only tear he ever saw her 
shed while she was ill." 

At length, too late, other and more sensible means were re- 
sorted to : but the queen's strength was failing fast. It must 
have been a strange scene in that chamber of death. Much as 



196 THE QUEEN'S DYING BEQUESTS. 

the king really grieved for the queen's state, he was still suf- 
ficiently collected to grieve also lest Richmond Lodge, which 
was settled on the queen, should go to the hated Griff;* and 
he actually sent Lord Hervey to the lord chancellor to inquire 
about that point. It was decided that the queen could make 
a will, so the king informed her of his inquiries, in order to set 
her mind at ease, and to assure her it was impossible that the 
prince could in any Avay benefit pecuniarily from her death. 
The Princess Emily now sat up with her mother. The king 
went to bed. The Princess Caroline slej)t on a couch in the 
antechamber, and Lord Hervey lay on a mattress on the floor 
at the foot of the Princess Caroline's couch. 

On the following day (four after the first attack) mortifica- 
tion came on, and the weeping Princess Caroline and Lord 
Hervey were informed that the queen could not hold out 
many hours. Lord Hervey was ordered to withdraw. The 
king, the Duke of Cumberland, and the queen's four daugh- 
ters alone remained, the queen begging them not to leave her 
until she expired ; yet her life was prolonged many days. 

When alone with her family, she took from her finger a 
ruby ring, which had been placed on it at the time of the cor- 
onation, and gave it to the king. "This is the last thing," she 
said, " I have to give you ; naked I came to you, and naked 
I go from you ; I had every thing I ever possessed from you, 
and to you whatever I have I return." She then asked for 
her keys, and gave them to the king. To the Princess Caro- 
line she intrusted the care of her younger sisters ; to the Duke 
of Cumberland, that of keeping up the credit of the family. 
"Attempt nothing against your brother, and endeavor to mor- 
tify him by showing superior merit," she said to him. She ad- 
vised the king to marry again ; he heard her in sobs, and with 
much difficulty got out this sentence : " Non^faurai des mat- 
tresses" To which the queen made no other reply than "Ah, 
rnon Dieu! cela rf empeche pas^ "I know," says Lord Her- 
vey, in his Memoirs, " that this episode w y ill hardly be credit- 
ed, but it is literally true." 

She then fancied she could sleep. The king kissed her, and 
wept over her ; yet when she asked for her watch, which hung 
near the chimney, that she might give him the seal to take care 
of, his brutal temper broke forth. In the midst of his tears he 
called out, in a loud voice, " Let it alone ! mon Dieu ! the queen 
has such strange fancies ; who should meddle with your seal ? 
It is as safe there as in my pocket." 

The queen then thought she could sleep, and, in fact, sank 
to rest. She felt refreshed on awakening and said, " I wish it 
* Prince Frederick. 



ARCHBISHOP POTTER IS SENT FOR. 197 

was over ; it is only a reprieve to make me suffer a little lon- 
ger ; I can not recover, but my nasty heart will not break yet." 
She had an impression that she should die on a Wednesday : 
she had, she said, been born on a Wednesday, married on a 
Wednesday, crowned on a Wednesday, her first child was born 
on a Wednesday, and she had heard of the late king's death 
on a Wednesday. 

On the ensuing day she saw Sir Robert Walpole. " My 
good Sir Robert," she thus addressed him, " you see me in a 
very indifferent situation. I have nothing to say to you but 
to recommend the king, my children, and the kingdom to your 
care." 

Lord Hervey, when the minister retired, asked him what he 
thought of the queen's state. 

" My lord," was the reply, " she is as much dead as if she 
was in her coffin ; if ever I heard a corpse speak, it was just 
now in that room !" 

It was a sad, an awful death-bed. The Prince of Wales 
having sent to inquire after the health of his dying mother, 
the queen became uneasy lest he should hear the true state 
of her case, asking "if no one would send those ravens," 
meaning the prince's attendants, " out of the house. They 
were only," she said, " watching her death, and would gladly 
tear her to pieces wdiile she was alive." While thus she 
spoke of her son's courtiers, that son was sitting wp all night 
in his house in Pall Mall, and saying, when any messenger 
came in from St. James's, "Well, sure, w T e shall soon have 
good news, she can not hold out much longer." And the 
princesses were writing letters to prevent the princess royal 
from coming to England, wdiere she was certain to meet with 
brutal unkindness from her father, w T ho covdd not endure to 
be put to any expense. Orders were, indeed, sent to stop 
her if she set out. She came, however, on pretense of taking 
the Bath waters; but George II., furious at her disobedience, 
obliged her to go direct to and from Bath without stopping, 
and never forgave her. 

Notwithstanding her predictions, the queen survived the 
fatal Wednesday. Until this time no prelate had been called 
in to pray by her majesty, nor to administer the Holy Com- 
munion ; and as people about the court began to be scandal- 
ized by this omission, Sir Robert Walpole advised that the 
Archbishop of Canterbury should be sent for : his opinion was 
couched in the following terms, characteristic at once of the 
man, the times, and the court : 

" Pray, madam," he said to the Princess Emily, " let this 
farce be played ; the archbishop will act it very well. You 



198 TIIK DUTY OF RECONCILIATION. 

may bid him be as short as you will : it will do the queen no 
hurt, no more than any good ; and it will satisfy all the wise 
and good fools who will call us atheists if we don't pretend to 
be as great fools as they are." 

Unhappily, Lord Hervey, who relates this anecdote, was 
himself an unbeliever ; yet the scoffing tone adopted by Sir 
Robert seems to have shocked even him. 

In consequence of this advice, Archbishop Potter prayed 
by the queen morning and evening, the king always quitting 
the room when his grace entered it. Her children, however, 
knelt by her bedside. Still the whisperers who censured were 
unsatisfied — the concession was thrown away. Why did not 
the queen receive the communion ? Was it, as the world be- 
lieved, either "that she had reasoned herself into a very low 
and cold assent to Christianity?" or "that she was hetero- 
dox;" or "that the archbishop refused to administer the sac- 
rament until she should be reconciled to her son ?" Even 
Lord Hervey, who rarely left the antechamber, has only by 
his silence proved that she did not take the communion. That 
antechamber was crowded with persons who, as the prelate 
left the chamber of death, crowded around, eagerly asking, 
"Has the queen received?" "Her Majesty," was the evasive 
reply, "is in a heavenly disposition :" the public were thus de- 
ceived. Among those who were near the queen at this sol- 
emn hour was Dr. Butler, author of the " Analogy." He had 
been made clerk of the closet, and became, after the queen's 
death, Bishop of Bristol. He was in a remote living in Dur- 
ham, when the queen, remembering that it was long since she 
had heard of him, asked the Archbishop of York " whether 
Dr. Butler was dead ?" " No, madam," replied that prelate 
(Dr. Blackburn), "but he is buried ;" upon which she had sent 
for him to court. Yet he was not courageous enough, it seems, 
to speak to her of her son anfl. of the duty of reconciliation ; 
whether she ever sent the prince any message or not is uncer- 
tain ; Lord Hervey is silent on that point, so that it is to be 
feared that Lord Chesterfield's line, 

"And, unforgiving, unforgiven, dies!" 

had but too sure a foundation in fact ; so that Pope's sarcastic 
verses — 

" Hang the sad verse on Carolina's urn. 

And hail her passage to the realms of rest ; 

All parts performed, and all her children blest," 

may have been but too just, though cruelly bitter. The queen 
lingered till the 20th of November. During that interval of 
agony her consort was perpetually boasting to every one of 



THE DEATH OF QUEEN CAROLINE. 199 

her virtues, her sense, her patience, her softness, her delicacy ; 
and ending with the praise, " Comme elle soutenoit sa (lignite 
avec grace, avec politesse, avec douceur/" Nevertheless he 
scarcely ever went into her room. Lord Hervey states "that 
he did, even in this moving situation, s)iub her for something 
or other she did or said." One morning, as she lay with her 
eyes fixed on a point in the air, as people sometimes do when 
they want to keep their thoughts from wandering, the king 
coarsely told her " she looked like a calf which had just had its 
throat cut." He expected her to die in state. Then, with all 
his bursts of tenderness he always mingled his own praises, 
hinting that though she was a good wife, he knew he had de- 
served a good one, and remarking, when he had extolled her 
understanding, that he did not " think it the worse for her hav- 
ing kept him company so many years." To all this Lord Her- 
vey listened with, doubtless, well-concealed disgust ; for cabals 
were even then forming for the future influence that might or 
might not be obtained. 

The queen's life, meantime, was softly ebbing away in this 
atmosphere of selfishness, brutality, and unbelief. One even- 
ing she asked Dr. Tessier impatiently how long her state 
might continue ? 

" Your Majesty," was the reply, " will soon be released." 

" So much the better," the queen calmly answered. 

At ten o'clock that night, while the king lay at the foot of 
her bed, on the floor, and the Princess Emily on a conch-bed 
in the room, the fearful death-rattle in the throat was heard. 
Mrs. Puree], her chief and old attendant, gave the alarm : the 
Princess Caroline and Lord Hervey were sent for; but the 
princess was too late, her mother had expired before she ar- 
rived. All the dying queen said was, "I have now got an 
asthma; open the window." then she added, " Fray!" That 
was her last word. As the Princess Emily began to read 
some prayers, the sufferer breathed her last sigh. The Prin- 
cess Caroline held a looking-glass to her lips, and finding there 
was no damp on it, said, " "Tis over !" Yet she shed not one 
tear upon the arrival of that event, the prospect of which had 
cost her so many heart-rending sobs. 

The king kissed the lifeless face and hands of his often-in- 
jured wife, and then retired to his own apartment, ordering 
that a page should sit up with him for that and several other 
nights, for his majesty was afraid of apparitions, and feared 
to be left alone. He caused himself, however, to be buried 
by the side of his queen, in Henry VII.'s chapel, and ordered 
that one side of his coffin and of hers should be withdrawn ; 
and in that state the two coffins were discovered not many 
years ac;o. 



200 A CHANGE IN IIERVEy's LIFE. 

With the death of Queen Caroline, Lord Hervey's life, as to 
court, was changed. He was afterward made lord privy seal, 
and had consequently to enter the political world, with the 
disadvantage of knowing that much was expected from a man 
of so high a reputation for wit and learning. He was violently 
opposed by Pelham, Duke of Newcastle, who had been ad- 
verse to his entering the ministry ; and since, with Walpole's 
favor, it was impossible to injure him by fair means, it was 
resolved to oppose Lord Hervey by foul ones. One evening, 
when he was to speak, a party of fashionable Amazons, with 
two duchesses — her grace of Queensberry and her grace of 
Ancaster — at their head, stormed the House of Lords and dis- 
turbed the debate with noisy laughter and sneers. Poor Lord 
Hervey was completely daunted, and spoke miserably. After 
Sir Robert Walpole's fall Lord Hervey retired. The follow- 
ing letter from him to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu fully de- 
scribes his position and circumstances : 

" I must now," he writes to her, " since you take so friendly 
a part in what concerns me, give you a short account of my 
natural and political health ; and when I say I am still alive, 
and still privy seal, it is all I can say for the pleasure of one 
or the honor of the other ; for since Lord Orford's retiring, 
as I am too proud to offer my service and friendship where I 
am not sure they will be accepted of, and too inconsiderable 
to have those advances made to me (though I never forgot or 
failed to return any obligation I ever received), so I remained 
as illustrious a nothing in this office as ever tilled it since it was 
erected. There is one benefit, however, I enjoy from this loss 
of my court interest, which is, that all those flies which were 
buzzing about me in the summer sunshine and full ripeness of 
that interest, have all deserted its autumnal decay, and from 
thinking my natural death not far off, and my political demise 
already over, have all forgot the death-bed of the one and the 
coffin of the other." 

Again he wrote to her a characteristic letter : 

" I have been confined these three weeks by a fever, which 
is a sort of annual tax my detestable constitution pays to our 
detestable climate at the return of every spring; it is iioav 
much abated, though not quite gone off." 

He was long a helpless invalid ; and on the 8th of Au- 
gust, 1743, his short, unprofitable, brilliant, unhappy life was 
closed. He died at Ickworth, attended and deplored by his 
wife, who had ever held a secondary part in the heart of the 
great wit and beau of the court of George II. After his death 
his son George returned to Lady Mary all the letters she had 
written to his father : the packet was sealed ; an assui-ance 



LORD HERVEY'S DEATH. 201 

was at the same time given that they had not been read. In 
acknowledging this act of attention, Lady Mary wrote that 
" she could almost regret that he had not glanced his eye over 
a correspondence which might have shown him what so' young 
a man might perhaps be inclined to doubt — the possibility of 
a long and steady friendship subsisting between two persons 
of different sexes without the least mixture of love." 

Nevertheless, some expressions of Lord Hervey seem to 
have bordered on the tender style, when writing to Lady Mary 
in such terms as these. She had complained that she was too 
old to inspire a passion (a sort of challenge for a compliment), 
on which he wrote : " I should think any body a great fool 
that said he liked spring better than summer, merely because 
it is further from autumn, or that they loved green fruit bet- 
ter than ripe only because it was further from being rotten. 
I ever did, and believe ever shall, like woman best — 

'.Just in the noon of life — those golden clays, 
When the mind ripens ere the form decays. ' " 

Certainly this looks very unlike a pure Platonic, and it is 
not to be wondered at that Lady Hervey refused to call on 
Lady Mary, when, long after Lord Hervey's death, that fasci- 
nating woman returned to England. A wit, a courtier at the 
very fount of all politeness, Lord Hervey wanted the genuine 
source of all social qualities — Christianity. That moral re- 
frigerator which checks the kindly current of neighborly kind- 
ness, and which prevents all genial feelings from expanding, 
produced its usual effect — misanthrophy. Lord Hervey's lines, 
in his " Satire after the manner of Persius," describes too well 
his own mental canker : 

" Mankind I know, their motives and their art, 
Their vice their own, their virtue best apart. 
Till played so oft, that all the cheat can tell, 
And dangerous only when 'tis acted well." 

Lord Hervey left in the possession of his family a manu- 
script work, consisting of memoirs of his own time, written in 
his own autograph, Avhich was clean and legible. This work, 
which has furnished many of the anecdotes connected with 
his court life in the foregoing pages, was long guarded from 
the eye of any but the Hervey family, owing to an injunction 
given in his will by Augustus, third Earl of Bristol, Lord 
Hervey's son, that it should not see the light until after the 
death of His Majesty George HI. It was not therefore pub- 
lished until 1848, when they were edited by Mr. Croker. 
They are referred to both by Horace Walpole, who had 
heard of them, if he had not seen them, and by Lord Hailes, 

12 



202 



hervey's memoirs of his own time. 



as affording the most intimate portraiture of a court that has 
ever been presented to the English people. Such a delinea- 
tion as Lord Hervey has left ought to cause a sentiment of 
thankfulness in every British heart for not being exposed to 
such influences, to such examples as he gives, in the present 
day, when goodness, affection, purity, benevolence, are the 
household deities of the court of our beloved, inestimable 
Queen Victoria. 



PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE, FOURTH EARL OF CHES- 
TERFIELD. 

The subject of this memoir maybe thought by some rather 
the modeler of wits than the original of that class ; the great 
critic and judge of manners rather than the delight of the din- 
ner-table ; but Ave are told to the contrary by one who loved 
him not. Lord Hervey says of Lord Chesterfield that he was 
" allowed by every body to have more conversable entertain- 
ing table-wit than any man of his time ; his propensity to ridi- 
cule, in which he indulged himself with infinite humor and no 
distinction ; and his inexhaustible spirits, and no disci'etion ; 
made him sought and feared — liked and not loved — by most 
of his acquaintance." 

This formidable personage was born in London on the 2d 
day of September, 1694. It was remarkable that the father of 
a man so vivacious, should have been of a morose temper ; all 
the wit and spirit of intrigue displayed by him remind us of 
the frail Lady Chesterfield, in the time of Charles II.* — that 
lady who was looked on as a martyr because her husband was 
jealous of her ; " a prodigy," says De Grammont, " in the city 
of London," where indulgent critics endeavor to excuse his 
lordship on account of his bad education, and mothers vowed 
that none of their sons should ever set Toot in Italy, lest they 
should " bring back with them that infamous custom of laying 
restraint on their wives." 

Even Horace Walpole cites Chesterfield as the "witty earl :" 
apropos to an anecdote which he relates of an Italian lady, 
who said that she was only four-and-twenty ; " I suppose," 
said Lord Chesterfield, " she means four-and-twenty stone." 

By his father the future wit, historian, and orator was ut- 
terly neglected ; but his grandmother, the Marchioness of 
Halifax, supplied to him the place of both parents, his mother 
— her daughter, Lady Elizabeth Saville — having died in his 
childhood. At the age of eighteen, Chesterfield, then Lord 
Stanhope, was entered at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. It was 
one of the features of his character to fall at once into the 
tone of the society into which he happened to be thrown. One 
can hardly imagine his being " an absolute pedant," but such 

* The Countess of Chesterfield here alluded to was the second wife of 
Philip, second Earl of Chesterfield. Philip Dormer, fourth Earl, was grand- 
son of the second Earl, by his third wife. 



204 heevey's description of chesterfield. 

was, actually, his own account of himself: " When I talked 
my best, I quoted Horace ; when I aimed at being facetious, 
I quoted Martial ; and when I had a mind to be a fine gentle- 
man, I talked Ovid. I was convinced that none but the an- 
cients had common sense ; that the classics contained every 
thing that was either necessary, useful, or ornamental to men ; 
and I was not even without thoughts of wearing the toga 
virilis of the Romans, instead of the vulgar and illiberal dress 
of the moderns." 

Thus, again, when in Paris, he caught the manners, as he 
had acquired the language, of the Parisians. "I shall not 
give you my opinion of the French, because I am very often 
taken for one of them, and several have paid me the highest 
compliment they think it in their power to bestow — which is, 
' Sir, you are just like ourselves.' I shall only tell you that 
J am insolent ; I talk a great deal ; I am very loud and per- 
emptory ; I sing and dance as I walk along ; and, above all, 
I spend an immense sum in kair-powder, feathers, and white 
gloves." 

Although he entered Parliament before he had attained the 
legal age, and was expected to make a great figure in that as- 
sembly, Lord Chesterfield preferred the reputation of a wit 
and a beau to any other distinction. " Call it vanity, if you 
will," he wrote in after life to his son, "and possibly it was 
so ; but my great object was to make every man and every 
woman love me. 1 often succeeded; but why? by taking- 
great pains." 

According to Lord Hervey's account he often even sacri- 
ficed his interest to his vanity. The description given of Lord 
Chesterfield by one as bitter as himself implies, indeed, that 
great pains were requisite to counterbalance the defects of na- 
ture. Wilkes, one of the ugliest men of his time, used to say, 
that with an hour's start he would carry off the affections of 
any woman from the handsomest man breathing. Lord Ches- 
terfield, according to Lord Hervey, required to be still longer 
in advance of a rival. 

" With a person," Hervey writes, " as disagreeable as it was 
possible for a human figure to be without being deformed, he 
affected following many women of the first beauty and the 
most in fashion. He was very short, disproportioned, thick, 
and clumsily made; had a broad, rough-featured, ugly face, 
with black teeth, and a head big enough for a Polyphemus. 
One Ben Ashurst, who said a few good things, though ad- 
mired for many, told Lord Chesterfield once, that he was like 
a stunted giant — which was a humorous idea and really ap- 
posite." 



STUDY OF ORATORY. — DUTY OF AN EMBASSADOR. 205 

Notwithstanding that Chesterfield, when young, injured both 
soul and body by pleasure and dissipation, he always found 
time for serious study : when he could not have it otherwise, 
he took it out of his sleep. How late soever he w T ent to bed, 
he resolved always to rise early ; and this resolution he ad- 
hered to so faithfully, that at the age of fifty-eight he could 
declare that for more than forty years he had never been in 
bed at nine o'clock in the morning, but had generally been up 
before eight. He had the good sense, in this respect, not to 
exaggerate even this homely virtue. He did not rise with the 
dawn, as many early risers pride themselves in doing, putting 
all the engagements of ordinary life out of their usual beat, 
just as if the clocks had been set two hours forward. The 
man who rises at four in this country, and goes to bed at nine, 
is a social and family nuisance. 

Strong good sense characterized Chesterfield's early pur- 
suits. Desultory reading he abhorred, He looked on it as 
one of the resources of age, but as injurious to the young in 
the extreme. " Throw away," thus he writes to his son, " none 
of your time upon those trivial, futile books, published by idle 
necessitous authors for the amusement of idle and ignorant 
readers." 

Even in those days such books " swarm and buzz about 
one:" "flap them away," says Chesterfield, "they have no 
sting." The earl directed the whole force of his mind to ora- 
tory, and became the finest speaker of his time. Writing to 
Sir Horace Mann, about the Hanoverian debate (in 1743, Dec. 
15),Walpole praising the speeches of Lords Halifax and Sand- 
wich, adds, " I was there, and heard Lord Chesterfield make 
the finest oration I ever heard there." This from a man who 
had listened to Pulteney, to Chatham, to Carteret, was a sin- 
gularly valuable tribute. 

While a student at Cambridge, Chesterfield was forming an 
acquaintance with the Hon. George Berkeley, the youngest son 
of the second Earl of Berkeley, and remarkable rather as being 
the second husband of Lady Suffolk, the favorite of George 
II., than from any merits or demerits of his own. 

This early intimacy probably brought Lord Chesterfield into 
the close friendship which afterward subsisted between him 
and Lady Suffolk, to whom many of his letters are addressed. 

His first public capacity was a diplomatic appointment : he 
afterward attained to the rank of an embassador, whose duty 
it is, according to a witticism of Sir Henry Wotton's, " to lie 
abroad for the good of his country;" and no man was in this 
respect more competent to fulfill these requirements than Ches- 
terfield. Hating both wine and tobacco, he had smoked and 



200 GEORGE II.'S OPINION OP HIS CHRONICLERS. 

drunk at Cambridge, " to be in the fashion ;" he gamed at the 
Hague, on the same principle ; and, unhappily, gaming became 
a habit and a passion. Yet never did he indulge it when act- 
ing, afterward, in a ministei'ial capacity. Neither when Lord 
Lieutenant of Ireland, or as Under-secretary of State, did he 
allow a gaming-table in his house. On the very night that he 
resigned office he went to White's. 

The Hague was then a charming residence : among others 
who, from political motives, were living there, were John Duke 
of Marlborough and Queen Sarah, both of whom paid Chester- 
field marked attention. Naturally industrious, with a ready 
insight into character — a perfect master in that art which bids 
us keep one's thoughts close, and our countenances open, 
Chesterfield was admirably fitted for diplomacy. A master 
of modern languages and of history, he soon began to like 
business. When in England, he had been accused of having 
" a need of a certain proportion of talk in a day :" " that," he 
wrote to Lady Suffolk, " is now changed into a need of such a 
proportion of writing in a day." 

In 1728 he was promoted: being sent as embassador to the 
Hague, where he was popular, and where he believed his stay 
would be beneficial both to soul and body, there being " fewer 
temptations, and fewer opportunities to sin," as he wrote to 
Lady Suffolk, *' than in England." Here his days passed, he 
asserted, in doing the king's business very ill — and his own 
still worse : sitting down daily to dinner with fourteen or fif- 
teen people ; while at five the pleasures of the evening began 
with a lounge on the Voorhoot, a public walk planted by 
Charles V. : then, either a very bad French play, or a " reprise 
quadrille," with three ladies, the youngest of them fifty, and 
the chance of losing, perhaps, three florins (besides one's time) 
— lasted till ten o'clock ; at which time " His Excellency" went 
home, " reflecting with satisfaction on the innocent amuse- 
ments of a well-spent day, that left nothing behind them," 
and retired to bed at eleven, " with the testimony of a good 
conscience." 

All, however, of Chesterfield's time was not passed in this 
serene dissipation. He began to compose "The History of 
the Reign of George II." at this period. About only half a 
dozen characters were written. The intention was not con- 
fined to Chesterfield : Carteret and Bolingbroke entertained 
similar design, which was completed by neither. When thi 
subject was broached before George II., he thus expressed 
himself: and his remarks are the more amusing as they were 
addressed to Lord Hervey, who was, at that very moment, 
making his notes for that bitter chronicle of his majesty's 






LIFE IN THE COUjSTRY. 207 

reign, which has been ushered into the world by the late Wilson 
Croker — " They will all three," said King George II., " have 
about as much truth in them as the Mille et line JVuits. Not 
bnt I shall like to read Bolingbroke's, who of all those rascals 
and knaves that have been lying against me these ten years 
has certainly the best parts, and the most knowledge. He is 
a scoundrel, but he is a scoundrel of a higher class than Ches- 
terfield. Chesterfield is a little, tea-table scoundrel, that tells 
little womanish lies to make quarrels in families ; and tries to 
make women lose their reputations, and make their husbands 
beat them, without any object but to give himself airs ; as if 
any body could believe a woman could like a dwarf baboon." 

Lord Hervey gave the preference to Bolingbroke : stating 
as his reason, that " though Lord Bolingbroke had no idea of 
wit, his satire was keener than any one's. Lord Chesterfield, 
on the other hand, would have a great deal of wit in them; 
but, in every page you would see he intended to be witty : 
every paragraph would be an epigram. Polish, he declared, 
would be his bane ;" mid Lord Hervey was perfectly right. 

In -1732 Lord Chesterfield was obliged to retire from his 
embassy on the plea of ill-health, but, probably, from some 
political cause. He was in the opposition against Sir Robert 
Walpole on the Excise Bill ; and felt the displeasure of that 
all-powerful .minister by being dismissed from his office of 
High Steward. 

Being badly received at court, he now lived in the country ; 
sometimes at Buxton, where his father drank the waters, where 
he had his recreations, when not persecuted by two young 
brothers, Sir William Stanhope and John Stanhope, one of 
whom performed "tolerably ill upon a broken hautboy, and 
the other something worse upon a cracked flute." There he 
won three half-crowns from the curate of the place, and a 
shilling from " Gaffer Foxeley" at a cock-match. Sometimes 
he sought relaxation in Scarborough, where fashionable beaux 
" danced with the pretty ladies all night," and hundreds of 
Yorkshire country bumpkins " played the inferior parts ; and, 
as it were, only tumble, while the others dance upon the high 
ropes of gallantry." Scarborough was full of Jacobites: the 
popular feeling was then all rife against Sir Robert Walpole's 
excise scheme. Lord Chesterfield thus wittily satirized that 
famous measure : 

"The people of this town are, at present, in great constei-- 
nation upon a report they have heard from London, which, if 
true, they think will ruin them. They are informed, that con- 
sidering the vast consumption of these waters, there is a de- 
sign laid of excising them next session ; and, moreover, that 



208 MELUSINA, COUNTESS OF WALSINGHAM. 

as bathing in the sea is become the general practice of both 
sexes, and as the kings of England have always been allowed 
to be masters of the seas, every person so bathing shall be 
ganged, and pay so much per foot square as their cubical bulk 
amounts to." 

In 1733, Lord Chesterfield married Melusina, the supposed 
niece, but, in fact, the daughter of the Duchess of Kendal, the 
mistress of George I. This lady was presumed to be a great 
heiress, from the dominion which her mother had over the 
king. Melusina had been created (for life) Baroness of Aid- 
borough, county Suffolk, and Countess of Walsingham, county 
Norfolk, nine years previous to her marriage. 

Her father being George I., as Horace Walpole terms him, 
"rather a good sort of man than a shining king," and her 
mother "being no genius," there was probably no great at- 
traction about Lady Walsingham except her expected dowry. 

During her girlhood Melusina resided in the apartments at 
St. James's — opening into the garden ; and here Horace Wal- 
pole describes his seeing George I., in the rooms appropriated 
to the Duchess of Kendal, next to those of Melusina Schulem- 
berg, or, as she was then called, the Countess of Walsingham. 
The Duchess of Kendal was then very " lean and ill-favored." 
"Just before her," says Horace, "stood a tall, elderly man, 
rather pale, of an aspect rather good-natured than august : in 
a dark tie-wig, a plain coat, waistcoat, and breeches of snuff- 
colored cloth, with stockings of the same color, and a blue 
ribbon over all. That was George I." 

The Duchess of Kendal had been maid of honor to the 
Electress Sophia, the mother of George I., and the daughter 
of Elizabeth of Bohemia. The duchess was always frightful ; 
so much so that one night the electress, who had acquired a 
little English, said to Mrs. Howard, afterward Lady Suffolk, 
glancing at Mademoiselle Schulemberg, "Look at that mawkin, 
and think of her being my son's passion !" 

The duchess, however, like all the Hanoverians, knew how 
to profit by royal preference. She took bribes ; she had a set- 
tlement of £3000 a year. But her daughter was eventually 
disappointed of the expected bequest from her father, the king.* 

In the apartments at St. James's Lord Chesterfield for some 
time lived, when he was not engaged in office abroad ; and 

* In the "Annual Register" for 1774, p. 20, it is stated that as George I. 
had left Lady Walsingham a legacy which his successor did not think proper 
to deliver, the Earl of Chesterfield was determined to recover it by a suit in 
Chancery, had not his majesty, on questioning the Lord Chancellor on the 
subject, and being answered that he could give no opinion extra-judicially, 
thought proper to fulfill the bequest. 




m 







A KOYAL KOIiUEf! 



DISSOLVING VIEWS 211 

there he dissipated large sums in play. It was here, too, that 
Queen Caroline, the wife of George II., detected the intimacy 
that existed between Chesterfield and Lady Suffolk. There 
was an obscure window in Queen Caroline's apartments, which 
looked into a dark passage, lighted only by a single lamp at 
night. One Twelfth Night Lord Chesterfield, having won a 
large sum at cards, deposited it with Lady Suffolk, thinking it 
not safe to carry it home at night. He was watched, and his 
intimacy with the mistress of George II. thereupon inferred. 
Thenceforth he could obtain no court influence; and, in des- 
peration, he went into the opposition. 

On the death of George L, a singular scene, with which Lord 
Chesterfield's interests were connected, occurred in the Privy 
Council. Dr. Wake, Archbishop of Canterbury, produced the 
king's will, and delivered it to his successor, expecting that it 
would be opened and read in the council ; what was his con- 
sternation when his majesty, without saying a word, put it into 
his pocket, and stalked out of the room with real German im- 
perturbability ! Neither the astounded prelate nor the sub- 
servient council ventured to utter a word. The will was nev- 
er more heard of: rumor declared that it was burnt. The con- 
tents, of course, never transpired ; and the legacy of £40,000, 
said to have been left to the Duchess of Kendal, was never 
more spoken of, until Lord Chesterfield, in 1733, married the 
Countess of Walsingham. In 1 743, it is said, he claimed the 
legacy, in right of his wife, the Duchess of Kendal being then 
dead : and was " quieted" with £20,000, and got, as Horace 
AValpole observes, nothing from the duchess — "except his 
wife." 

The only excuse that was urged to extenuate this act, on 
the part of George II., was that his royal father had burned 
two wills which had been made in his favor. These were sup- 
posed to be the wills of the Duke and Duchess of Zell and of 
the Electress Sophia. There was not even common honesty 
in the house of Hanover at that period. 

Disappointed in his wife's fortune, Lord Chesterfield seems 
to have cared very little for the disappointed heiress. Their 
union was childless. His opinion of marriage appears very 
much to have coincided with that of the world of malcontents 
who rush, in the present day, to the court of Judge Cresswell, 
with " dissolving views." On one occasion, he writes thus : 
" I have at last done the best office that can be done to most 
married people ; that is, I have fixed the separation between 
my brother and his wife, and the definitive treaty of peace 
will be proclaimed in about a fortnight." 

Horace Walpole related the following anecdote of Sir Wil- 



212 MADAME DU BOUCHET. 

liam Stanhope (Chesterfield's brother) and his lady, whom he 
calls a " fond couple." After their return from Paris, when 
they arrived at Lord Chesterfield's house at Blackheath, Sir 
William, who had, like his brother, a cutting, polite wit, that 
was probably expressed with the " allowed simper" of Lord 
Chesterfield, got out of the chaise and said, with a low bow, 
"Madame, I hope I shall never see your face again." She re- 
plied, " Sir, I will take care that you never shall ;" and so they 
parted.- 

There was little probability of Lord Chesterfield's partici- 
pating in domestic felicity, when neither his heart nor his fan- 
cy were engaged in the union which he had formed. The lady 
to whom he was really attached, and by whom he had a son, 
resided in the Netherlands : she passed by the name of Mad- 
ame du Bouchet, and survived both Lord Chesterfield and her 
son. A permanent provision was made for her, and a sum of 
five hundred pounds bequeathed to her, with these words : 
"as a small reparation for the injury I did her." " Certainly," 
adds Lord Mahon, in his Memoir of his illustrious ancestor, 
" a small one." 

For some time Lord Chesterfield remained in England, and 
his letters are dated from Bath, from Tonbridge, from Black- 
heath. He had, in 1726, been elevated to the House of Lords 
upon the death of his father. In that assembly his great elo- 
quence is thus well described by his biographer :* 

" Lord Chesterfield's eloquence, the fruit of much study, 
was less characterized by force and compass than by elegance 
and perspicuity, and especially by good taste and urbanity, and 
a vein of delicate irony which, while it sometimes inflicted 
severe strokes, never passed the limits of decency and proprie- 
ty. It was that of a man who, in the union of wit and good 
sense with politeness, had not a competitor. These qualities 
were matured by the advantage which he assiduously sought 
and obtained, of a familiar acquaintance with almost all the 
eminent wits and writers of his time, many of whom had 
been the ornaments of a preceding age of literature, while oth- 
ers were destined to become those of a later period." 

The accession of George II., to whose court Lord Chester- 
field had been attached for many years, brought him no po- 
litical preferment. The court had, however, its attractions, 
oven for one who owed his polish to the belles of Paris, and 
who was almost always, in taste and manners, more foreign 
than English. Henrietta, Lady Pomfret, the daughter and 
heiress of John, Lord Jeffreys, the son of Judge Jeffreys, was 
at that time the leader of fashion. 

* Lord Mahon, now Earl of Stanhope, if not the most eloquent, one of 
the most honest historians of our time. 



THE BROAD-BOTTOMED ADMINISTRATION. 213 

Six daughters, one of them Lady Sophia, surpassingly love- 
ly, recalled the perfections of that ancestress, Arabella Fer- 
mor, whose charms Pope has so exquisitely touched in the 
"Rape of the Lock." Lady Sophia became eventually the 
wife of Lord Carteret, the minister, whose talents and the 
charms of whose eloquence constituted him a sort of rival to 
Chesterfield. With all his abilities, Lord Chesterfield may be 
said to have failed both as a courtier and as a political charac- 
ter, as far as permanent influence in any ministry was con- 
cerned, until in 1 744, when what was called the " Broad-bot- 
tomed administration" was formed, when he was admitted 
into the cabinet. In the following year, however, he went, 
for the last time, to Holland, as embassadoi", and succeeded 
beyond the expectations of his party in the purposes of his em- 
bassy. He took leave of the States-General just before the 
battle of Fontenoy, and hastened to Ireland, where he had 
been nominated Lord Lieutenant previous to his journey to 
Holland. He remained in that country only a year ; but long 
enough to prove how liberal were his views — how kindly the 
dispositions of his heart. 

Only a few years before Lord Chesterfield's arrival in Dub- 
lin, the Duke of Shrewsbury had given as a reason for accept- 
ing the vice-regency of that country (of which King James 
I. had said, there was " more ado" than with any of his do- 
minions), "that it was a place where a man had business 
enough to keep him from falling asleep, and not enough to 
keep him awake." 

Chesterfield, however, was not of that opinion. He did 
more in one year than the duke would have accomplished in 
five. He began by instituting a principle of impartial justice. 
Formerly, Protestants had alone been employed as "mana- 
gers ;" the Lieutenant w T as to see with Protestant eyes, to hear 
w T ith Protestant ears. 

" I have determined to proscribe no set of persons what- 
ever," says Chesterfield, " and determined to be governed by 
none. Had the Papists made any attempt to put themselves 
above the law, I should have taken good care to have quelled 
them again. It was said my lenity to the Papists had wrought 
no alteration either in their religious or their political senti- 
ments. I did not expect that it would ; but surely that was 
no reason for cruelty toward them." 

Often by a timely jest Chesterfield conveyed a hint, or even 
shrouded a reproof. One of the ultra-zealous informed him 
that his coachman was a Papist, and went every Sunday to 
mass. " Does he indeed ? I will take care he never drives 
me there," was Chesterfield's cool reply. 



214 REFORMATION OF THE CALENDAR. 

It was at this critical period, when the Hanoverian dynasty 
was shaken almost to its downfall by the insurrection in Scot- 
land of 1745, that Ireland was imperiled: "With a weak or 
wavering, or a fierce and headlong Lord Lieutenant — with a 
Grafton or a Strafford," remarks Lord Mahon, "there would 
soon have been a simultaneous rising in the Emerald Isle." 
But Chesterfield's energy, his lenity, his wise and just admin- 
istration saved the Irish from being excited into rebellion by 
the emissaries of Charles Edward, or slaughtered, when con- 
quered, by the " Batcher," and his tiger-like dragoons. When 
all was over, and that sad page of history in which the deaths 
of so many faithful adherents of the exiled family are record- 
ed, had been held up to the gaze of bleeding Caledonia, Ches- 
terfield recommended mild measures, and advised the estab- 
lishment of schools in the Highlands ; but the age was too 
narrow-minded to adopt his views. In January, 1748, Ches- 
terfield retired from public life. " Could I do any good," he 
wrote to a friend, " I would sacrifice some more quiet to it ; 
but convinced as I am that I can do none, I will indulge my 
ease, and preserve my character. I have gone through pleas- 
ures while my constitution and my spirits would allow me. 
Business succeeded them; and I have now gone through every 
part of it without liking it at all the better for being ac- 
quainted with it. Like many other things, it is most admired 
by those who know it least. ... I have been behind the scenes 
both of pleasure and business ; I have seen all the coarse pul- 
leys and dirty ropes which exhibit and move all the gaudy ma- 
chines ; and I have seen and smelt the tallow candles which 
illuminate the whole decoration, to the astonishment and ad- 
miration of the ignorant multitude. . . . My horse, my books, 
and my friends will divide my time pretty equally." 

He still interested himself in what was useful ; and carried 
a Bill in the House of Lords for the Reformation of the Calen- 
dar, in 1751. It seems a small matter for so great a mind as 
his to accomplish, but it was an achievement of infinite diffi- 
culty. Many statesmen had shrunk from the undertaking; 
and even Chesterfield found it essential to prepare the public, 
by writing in some periodical papers on the subject. Nev- 
ertheless the vulgar outcry was vehement: "Give us back 
the eleven days we have been robbed of!" cried the mob at 
a general election. When Bradley was dying, the common 
people ascribed his sufferings to a judgment for the part he 
had taken in that " impious transaction," the alteration of the 
calendar. But they were not less homes in their notions than 
the Duke of Newcastle, then prime minister. Upon Lord 
Chesterfield giving him notice of his bill, that bustling prem- 



CHESTERFIELD HOUSE. 215 

ier, who had been in a hurry for forty years, who never "walk- 
ed but always ran," greatly alarmed, begged Chesterfield not 
to stir matters that had been long quiet ; adding, that he did 
not like " new-fangled things." He was, as Ave have seen, 
overruled, and henceforth the New Style Avas adopted ; and 
no special calamity has fallen on the nation, as was expected, 
in consequence. Nevertheless, after Chesterfield had made his 
speech in the House of Lords, and when every one had com- 
plimented him on the clearness of his explanation — " God 
knows," he wrote to his son, "I had not even attempted to 
explain the bill to them ; I might as soon have talked Celtic or 
Sclavonic to them, as astronomy. They would have understood 
it full as well." So much for the "Lords" in those days! 

After his furore for politics had subsided, Chesterfield re- 
turned to his ancient passion for play. We must linger a lit- 
tle over the still brilliant period of his middle life, while his 
hearing was spared ; while his wit remained, and the charming- 
manners on which he had formed a science, continued ; and 
before Ave see him in the mournful decline of a life wholly giv- 
en to the world. 

He had now established himself in Chesterfield House. 
Hitherto his progenitors had been satisfied with Bloomsbury 
Square, in which the Lord Chesterfield mentioned by De Gram- 
mont resided ; but the accomplished Chesterfield chose a site 
near Audley Street, which had been built on what was called 
Mr. Audley's land, lying between Great Brook Field and the 
" Shoulder of Mutton Field." And near this locality with the 
elegant name, Chesterfield chose his spot, for which he had to 
wrangle and fight with the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, 
who asked an exorbitant sum for the ground. Isaac Ware, 
the editor of " Palladio," was the architect to whom the erec- 
tion of this handsome residence was intrusted. Happily, it is 
still untouched by any renovating hand. Chesterfield's favor- 
ite apartments, looking on the most spacious private garden 
in London, are just as they were in his time ; one especially, 
which he termed the " finest room in London," was furnished 
and decorated by him. "The Avails," says a writer in the 
" Quarterly Review," " are covered half way up Avith rich and 
classical stores of literature ; above the cases are in close series 
the portraits of eminent authors, French and English, with 
most of Avhom he had conversed ; over these, and immediately 
under the massive cornice, extend all round in foot-long capi- 
tals the Horatian lines : 

"Nunc . veterum . libris . Nunc . somno . et . inertibus . Horis. 
Lucen . solicter . jucunda . oblivia . vitea. 

" On the mantle-pieces and cabinets stand busts of old ora- 



216 EXCLUSIVENESS. 

tors, interspersed with voluptuous vases and bronzes, antique 
or Italian, and airy statuettes in marble or alabaster of nude 
or semi-nude opera nymphs." 

What Chesterfield called the "cannonical pillars" of the 
house were columns brought from Cannons, near Edgeware, 
the seat of the Duke of Chandos. The antechamber of Ches- 
terfield House has been erroneously stated as the room in 
which Johnson waited the great lord's pleasure. That state of 
endurance was probably passed by " Old Samuel" in Blooms- 
bury. 

In this stately abode — one of the few, the very few, that 
seem to hold noblesse apart in our leveling metropolis — Ches- 
terfield held his assemblies of all that London, or indeed En- 
gland, Paris, the Hague, or Vienna, could furnish of what was 
polite and charming. Those were days when the stream of 
society did not, as now, flow freely, mingling with the grace 
of aristocracy the acquirements of hard-working professors: 
there was then a strong line of demarkation ; it had not been 
broken down in the same way as now, when people of rank 
and wealth live in rows, instead of inhabiting hotels set apart. 
Paris has sustained a similar revolution, since her gardens 
were built over, and their green shades, delicious, in the cen- 
tre of that hot city, are seen no more. In the very Faubourg 
St. Germain, the grand old hotels are rapidly disappearing, and 
with them something of the exclusiveness of the higher or- 
ders. Lord Chesterfield, however, triumphantly pointing to 
the fruits of his taste, and distribution of his wealth, witnessed 
in his library at Chesterfield House, the events which time 
produced. He heard of the death of Sarah, Duchess of Marl- 
borough, and of her bequest to him of twenty thousand pounds, 
and her best and largest brilliant diamond ring, " out of the 
great regard she had for his merit, and the infinite obligations 
she had received from him." He witnessed the change of so- 
ciety and of politics which occurred when George II. expired, 
and the Earl of Bute, calling himself a descendant of the house 
of Stuart, " and humble enough to be proud of it," having 
quitted the Isle of Bute, which^Lord Chesterfield calls " but a 
little south of Nova Zembla," took possession, not only of the 
affections, but even of the senses of the young king, George 
III., who, assisted by the widowed Princess of Wales (sup- 
posed to be attached to Lord Bute), was "lugged out of the 
seraglio," and u placed upon the throne." 

Chesterfield lived to have the honor of having the plan of 
"Johnson's Dictionary" inscribed to him, and the dishonor of 
neglecting the great author. Johnson, indeed, denied the truth 
of the story which gained general belief, in which it was as- 



RECOMMENDING "JOHNSON'S DICTIONARY." 217 

serted that he had taken a disgust at being kept waiting in 
the earl's antechamber, the reason being assigned that his lord- 
ship " had company with him ;" when at last the door opened, 
and forth came Colley Cibber. Then Johnson — so report said 
— indignant, not only for having been kept waiting, but also 
for whom, went away, it was affirmed, in disgust ; but this 
was solemnly denied by the doctor, who assured Boswell that 
his wrath proceeded from continual neglect on the part of 
Chesterfield. 

While the Dictionary was in progress, Chesterfield seemed 
to forget the existence of him, whom, together with other lit- 
erary men, he affected to patronize. 

He once sent him ten pounds, after which he forgot John- 
son's address, and said "the great author had changed his 
lodgings." People who really wish to benefit others can al- 
ways discover where they lodge. The days of patronage were 
then expiring, but they had not quite ceased, and a dedication 
was always to be in some way paid for. 

When the publication of the Dictionary drew near, Lord 
Chesterfield flattered himself that, in spite of all his neglect, 
the great compliment of having so vast an undertaking dedi- 
cated to him would still be paid, and wrote some papers in the 
" World," recommending the work, more especially referring 
to the " plan," and terming Johnson the " dictator," in respect 
to language : " I will not only obey him," he said, " as my dic- 
tator, like an old Roman, but like a modern Roman, will im- 
plicitly believe in him as my pope." 

Johnson, however, was not to be propitiated by those " hon- 
eyed words." He wrote a letter couched in what he called 
" civil terms," to Chesterfield, from which we extract the fol- 
lowing passages : 

" When, upon some slight encouragement, I first visited your 
lordship, I was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the 
enchantment of your address ; and could not forbear to wish 
that I might boast myself vainqueur die vainqueur de la terre 
— that I might obtain that regard for which I saw the world 
contending ; but I found my attendance so little encouraged, 
that neither pride nor modesty would suffer me to continue it. 
When I had once addressed your lordship in publick, I had ex- 
hausted all the art of pleasing which a retired and uncourtly 
scholar can possess. I had done all that I could ; and no man 
is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little. 

" Seven years, my lord, have now passed, since I waited in 
your outward room, or Mas repulsed from your door, during 
which time I have been pushing on my work through difficul- 
ties, of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it, at 

K 



218 DEFENSIVE PRIDE OF THE "RESPECTABLE HOTTENTOT." 

last, to the verge of publication without one act of assistance, 
one word of encouragement, or one smile of favour : such treat- 
ment I did not expect, for I never had a patron before 

Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a 
man who is struggling for life in the water, and, when he has 
reached ground, encumbers him with help ? The notice which 
you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, 
had been kind ; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, 
and cannot enjoy it ; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it ; 
till I am known, and do not want it. I hope it is no very cyn- 
ical asperity not to confess obligations where no benefit has 
been received, or to be unwilling that the publick should con- 
sider me as owing that to a patron which Providence has ena- 
bled me to do for myself." 

The conduct of Johnson, on this occasion, was approved by 
most manly minds, except that of his publisher, Mr. Robert 
Dodsley ; Dr. Adams, a friend of Dodsley, said he was sorry 
that Johnson had written that celebrated letter (a very model 
of polite contempt). Dodsley said he was sorry too, for he 
had a property in the Dictionary, to which his lordship's pat- 
ronage might be useful. He then said that Lord Chesterfield 
had shown him the letter. "I should have thought," said 
Adams, "that Lord Chesterfield Avould have concealed it." 
" Pooh !" cried Dodsley, " do you think a letter from Johnson 
could hurt Lord Chesterfield ? not at all, sir. It lay on his ta- 
ble where any one might see it. He read it to me ; said, ' this 
man has great powers,' pointed out the severest passages, and 
said, ' how well they were expressed.' " The art of dissimu- 
lation, in which Chesterfield was perfect, imposed on Mr. 
Dodsley. 

Dr. Adams expostulated with the doctor, and said Lord 
Chesterfield declared he would part with the best servant he 
had, if he had known that he had turned away a man who 
was "always welcome." Then Adams insisted on Lord Ches- 
terfield's affability, and easiness of access to literary men. But 
the sturdy Johnson replied, "Sir, that is not Lord Chester- 
field ; he is the proudest man existing." " I think," Adams 
rejoined, " I know one that is prouder ; you, by your own ac- 
count, are the prouder of the two." " But mine," Johnson 
answered, with one of his happy turns, "was defensive pride." 
" This man," he afterward said, referring to Chesterfield, " I 
thought had been a lord among wits, but I find he is only a 
wit among lords." 

In revenge, Chesterfield in his Letters depicted Johnson, 
it is said, in the character of the "respectable Hottentot." 
Among other things he observed of the Hottentot, "he throws 



THE GLASS OF FASHION. 219 

his meat any where but clown his throat." This being remark- 
ed to Johnson, who was by no means pleased at being immor- 
talized as the Hottentot — " Sir," he answered, "Lord Chester- 
field never saw me eat in his life." 

Such are the leading points of this famous and lasting con- 
troversy. It is amusing to know that Lord Chesterfield was 
not always precise as to directions to his letters. He once di- 
rected to Lord Pembroke, who was always swimming, " To 
the Earl of Pembroke, in the Thames, over against White- 
hall." This, as Horace Walpole remarks, " was sure of find- 
ing him within a certain fathom." 

Lord Chesterfield was now admitted to be the very " glass 
of fashion," though age, and, according to Lord Hervey, a 
hideous person, impeded his being the " mould of form." " I 
don't know why," writes Horace Walpole, in the dog-days, 
from Strawberry Hill, " but people are always more anxious 
about their hay than their corn, or twenty other things that 
cost them more: I suppose my Lord Chesterfield, or some 
such dictator, made it fashionable to care about one's hay. 
Nobody betrays solicitude about getting in his rents." " The 
prince of wits," as the same authority calls him — "his entrance 
into the world was announced by his boti-mots, and his closing 
lips dropped repartees that sparkled with his juvenile fire." 

No one, it was generally allowed, had such a force of table- 
wit as Lord Chesterfield ; but while the " Graces" were ever 
his theme, he indulged himself without distinction or consid- 
eration in numerous sallies. He was, therefore, at once sought 
and feared ; liked but not loved ; neither sex, nor relationship, 
nor rank, nor friendship, nor obligation, nor profession, could 
shield his victim from what Lord Hervey calls " those pointed, 
glittering weapons, that seemed to shine only to a stander-by, 
but cut deep into those they touched." 

He cherished " a voracious appetite for abuse ;" fell upon 
every one that came in his way, and thus treated each one of 
his companions at the expense of the other. To him Hervey, 
who had probably often smarted, applied the lines of Boileau : 
"Mais c'est un petit feu qui se croit tout permis, 
Et qui pour un bon mot va perdre vingt amis." 
Horace Walpole (a more lenient judge of Chesterfield's merits) 
observes that " Chesterfield took no less pains to be the phoe- 
nix of fine gentlemen, than Tully did to qualify himself as an 
orator. Both succeeded : Tully immortalized his name ; Ches- 
terfield's reign lasted a little longer than that of a fashionable 
beauty." It was, perhaps, because, as Dr. Johnson said, all 
Lord Chesterfield's witty sayings were puns, that even this 
brilliant wit failed to please, although it amused and surprised 
its hearers. 



220 THE DEATH OP CHESTEKFIELD's SON. 

Notwithstanding the contemptuous description of Lord Ches- 
terfield's personal appearance by Lord Hervey, his portraits rep- 
resent a handsome, though hard countenance, well-marked fea- 
tures, and his figure and air appear to have been elegant. With 
his commanding talents, his wonderful brilliancy and fluency of 
conversation, he would perhaps sometimes have been even te- 
dious, had it not been for his invariable cheerfulness. He was ai- 
rways, as Lord Hervey says, "present" in his company. Among 
the few friends who really loved this thorough man of the world, 
was Lord Scarborough, yet no two characters were more op- 
posite. Lord Scarborough had judgment, without wit : Ches- 
terfield wit, and no judgment; Lord Scarborough had honesty 
and principle ; Lord Chesterfield had neither. Every body liked 
the one, but did not care for his company. Every one disliked 
the other, but wished for his company. The fact was, Scar- 
borough was " splendid and absent ;" Chesterfield, " cheerful 
and present :" wit, grace, attention to w r hat is passing, the sur- 
face, as it w r ere, of a highly-cultured mind, produced a fascina- 
tion that all the honor and respectability in the court of George 
II. could not compete with. 

In the earlier part of Chesterfield's career, Pope, Boling- 
broke, Hervey, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and, in fact, 
all that could add to the pleasures of the then early dinner- 
table, illumined Chesterfield House»by their wit and gayety. 
Yet in the midst of this exciting life, Lord Chesterfield found 
time to devote to the improvement of his natural son, Philip 
Stanhope, a great portion of his leisure. His celebrated Let- 
ters to that son did not, however, appear during the earl's life ; 
nor were they in any way the source of his popularity as a wit, 
which was due to his merits in that line alone. 

The youth to whom these letters, so useful, and yet so ob- 
jectionable, were addressed, was intended for a diplomatist. 
He was the very reverse of his father : learned, sensible, and 
dry; but utterly wanting in the graces, and devoid of elo- 
quence. As an orator, therefore, he failed ; as a man of soci- 
ety, he must also have failed; and his death, in 1768, some 
years before that of his father, left that father desolate and 
disappointed. Philip Stanhope had attained the rank of en- 
voy to Dresden, where he expired. 

During the five years in which Chesterfield dragged out a 
mournful life after this event, he made the painful discovery 
that his son had married, without confiding that step to the 
father to whom he owed so much. This must have been al- 
most as trying as the awkward, ungraceful deportment of him 
whom he mourned. The world now left Chesterfield ere he 
had left the world. He and his contemporary, Lord Tyraw- 



HIS INTEREST IN HIS GRANDSONS. 221 

ley, were now old and infirm. " The fact is," Chesterfield wit- 
tily said, "Tyrawley and I have been dead these two years, 
but Ave don't choose to have it known." 

" The Bath," he wrote to his friend Dayrolles, " did me more 
good than I thought any thing could do me ; but all that good 
does not amount to what builders call half-repairs, and only 
keeps up the shattered fabric a little longer than it would 
have stood without them ; but take my word for it, it will 
stand but a very little while longer. I am now in my grand 
climacteric, and shall not complete it. Fontenelle's last words 
at a hundred and three, were, Je souffre cVetre: deaf and in- 
firm as I am, I can with truth say the same thing at sixty-three. 
In my mind it is only the strength of our passions, and the 
weakness of our reason, that makes us so fond of life ; but when 
the former subside and give way to the latter, we grow weary 
of being, and willing to withdraw. I do not recommend this 
train of serious reflections to you, nor ought you to adopt them. 
. . . You have children to educate and provide for, you have 
all your senses, and can enjoy all the comforts both of domes- 
tic and social life. I am in every sense isole, and have wound 
up all my bottoms ; I may now walk off quietly, without miss- 
ing nor being missed." 

The kindness of his nature, corrupted as it was by a life 
wholly worldly, and but little illumined in its course by relig- 
ion, shone now in his care of his two grandsons, the offspring 
of his lost son, and of their mother, Eugenia Stanhope. To 
her he thus wrote : 

" The last time I had the pleasure of seeing you, I was so 
taken up in playing with the boys, that I forgot their more 
important affairs. How soon would you have them placed at 
school? When I know your pleasure as to that, I will send 
to Monsieur Perny, to prepare every thing for their reception. 
In the mean time, I beg that you will equip them thoroughly 
with clothes, linen, etc., all good, but plain ; and give me the 
amount, which I will pay ; for I do not intend, from this time 
forward, the two boys should cost you one shilling-." 

He lived, latterly, much at Blackheath, in the house which, 
being built on Crown land, has finally become the Ranger's 
lodge ; but which still sometimes goes by the name of Ches- 
terfield House. Here he spent large sums, especially on pic- 
tures, and cultivated Cantaloupe melons ; and here, as he grew 
older, and became permanently afflicted with deafness, his 
chief companion was a useful friend, Solomon Dayrolles — one 
of those indebted hangers-on whom it was an almost invaria- 
ble custom to find, at that period, in great houses — and per- 
haps too frequently in our own day. 



222 "i MUST GO AND REHEARSE MY FUNERAL." 

Dayrolles, who was employed in the embassy under Lord 
Sandwich at the Hague, had always, to borrow Horace Wal- 
pole's ill-natured expression, " been a led-captain to the Dukes 
of Richmond and Grafton, used to be sent to auctions for 
them, and to walk in the parks with their daughters, and once 
went dry-nurse in Holland with them. He has belonged, too, 
a good deal to my Loi'd Chesterfield, to whom I believe he 
owes this new honor, 'that of being minister at the Hague,' as 
he had before made him black-rod in Ireland, and gave the in- 
genious reason, that he had a black face." But the great 
"dictator" in the empire of politeness was now in a slow but 
sure decline. Not long before his death he was visited by 
Monsieur Suard, a French gentleman, who was anxious to see 
" r/wmme le plus aimable, le plus poll et le plus spirituel des 
trois royanmes" but who found him fearfully altered ; morose, 
from his deafness, yet still anxious to please. " It is very sad," 
he said with his usual politeness, " to be deaf, when one would 
so much enjoy listening. I am not," he added, " so philosophic 
as my friend the President de Montesquieu, who says, ' I know 
how to be blind, but I do not yet know how to be deaf.' " 
" We shortened our visit," says M. Suard, " lest we should fa- 
tigue the earl." "I do not detain you," said Chesterfield, 
"for I must go and rehearse my funeral." It was thus that 
he styled his daily drive through the streets of London. 

Lord Chesterfield's wonderful memory continued till his lat- 
est hour. As he lay, gasping in the last agonies of extreme 
debility, his friend, Mr. Dayrolles, called in to see him half an 
hour before he expired. The politeness which had become part 
of his very nature did not desert the dying earl. He man- 
aged to say, in a low voice, to his valet, " Give Dayrolles a 
chair." This little trait greatly struck the famous Dr. "War- 
ren, who was at the .bedside of this brilliant and wonderful 
man. He died on the 24th of March, 1773, in the 79th year 
of his age. 

The preamble to a codicil (Feb. 11, 1773) contains the fol- 
lowing striking sentences, written when the intellect was im- 
pressed with the solemnity of that solemn change which comes 
alike to the unreflecting and to the heart-stricken holy be- 
liever : 

" I most humbly recommend my soul to the extensive mercy 
of that Eternal, Supreme, Intelligent Being who gave it me; 
most earnestly, at the same time, deprecating his justice. Sa- 
tiated with the pompous follies of this life, of which I have had 
an uncommon share, I w r ould have no posthumous ones dis- 
played at my funeral, and therefore desire to be buried in the 



chesterfield's will. 223 

next burying-place to the place where I shall die, and limit the 
whole expense of my funeral to £100." 

His body was interred, according to his wish, in the vault of 
the chapel in South Audley Street, but it was afterward re- 
moved to the family burial-place in Shelford Church, Notting- 
hamshire. 

In his will he left legacies to his servants.* "I ^consider 
them," he said, " as unfortunate friends ; my equals by nature, 
and my inferiors only in the difference of our fortunes." There 
was something lofty in the mind that prompted that sentence. 

His estates reverted to a distant kinsman, descended from 
a younger son of the first earl ; and it is remarkable, on look- 
ing through the Peerage of Great Britain, to perceive how 
often this has been the case in a race remarkable for the ab- 
sence of virtue. Interested marriages, vicious habits, perhaps 
account for the fact ; but reti'ibutive justice, though it be pre- 
sumptuous to trace its course, is every where. 

He had so great a horror in his last days of gambling, that 
in bequeathing his possessions to his heir, as he expected, and 
godson, Philip Stanhope, he inserts this clause : 

" In case my said godson, Philip Stanhope, shall at any time 
hereinafter keep, or be concerned in keeping of, any race-horses, 
or pack of hounds, or reside one night at Newmarket, that in- 
famous seminary of iniquity and ill-manners, during the course 
of the races there ; or shall resort to the said races ; or shall 
lose, in any one day, at any game or bet whatsoever, the sum 
of £500, then, in any the cases aforesaid, it is my express will 
that he, my said godson, shall forfeit and pay, out of my es- 
tate, the sum of £5000 to and for the use of the Dean and 
Chapter of Westminster." 

When we say that Lord Chesterfield was a man who had 
no friend, we sum up his character in those few words. Just 
after his death, a small but distinguished party of men dined 
together at Topham Beauclerk's. There was Sir Joshua Rey- 
nolds ; Sir William Jones, the orientalist ; Bennet Langton ; 
Steevens ; Boswell ; Johnson. The conversation turned on 
Garrick, who, Johnson said, had friends, but no friend. Then 
Boswell asked, what is a friend ? One who comforts and sup- 
ports you, while others do not. " Friendship, you know, sir, 
is the cordial drop to make the nauseous draught of life go 
down." Then one of the company mentioned Lord Chester- 
field as one who had no friend ; and Boswell said : " Garrick 
was pure gold, but beat out to thin leaf, Lord Chesterfield was 
* Two years' wages were left to the servants. 



224 LES MANIERES NOBLES. 

tinsel." And, for once, Johnson did not contradict him. But 
not so do we judge Lord Chesterfield. He was a man who 
acted on false principles through life; and those principles 
gradually undermined every thing that was noble and gener- 
ous in character; just as those deep underground currents, 
noiseless in their course, work through fine-grained rock, and 
produce a chasm. Every thing with Chesterfield was self: for 
self, and for self alone, were agreeable qualities to be assumed ; 
for self, was the country to be served, because that country 
protects and serves us ; for self, were friends to be sought and' 
cherished, as useful auxiliaries, or pleasant accessories : in the 
very core of the cankered heart, that advocated this corrupting 
doctrine of expediency, lay unbelief; that worm which never 
died in the hearts of so many illustrious men of that period — 
the refrigerator of the feelings. 

One only gentle and genuine sentiment possessed Lord Ches- 
terfield, and that was his love for his son. Yet in this affec- 
tion the worldly man might be seen in mournful colors. He 
did not seek to render his son good ; his sole desire was to see 
him successful : every lesson that he taught him, in those 
matchless Letters which have carried down Chesterfield's fame 
to us when his other productions have virtually expired, ex- 
poses a code of dissimulation which Philip Stanhope, in his 
marriage, turned upon the father to whom he owed so. much 
care and advancement. These Letters are, in fact, a complete 
exposition of Lord Chesterfield's character and views of life. 
No other man could have written them ; no other man have 
conceived the notion of existence being one great effort to de- 
ceive, as well as to excel, and of society forming one gigantic 
lie. It is true they were addressed to one who was to enter 
the maze of a diplomatic career, and must be taken, on that 
account, with some reservation. 

They have justly been condemned on the score of immoral- 
ity ; but we must remember that the age in which they were 
written was one of lax notions, especially among men of rank, 
who regarded all women accessible, either from indiscretion or 
inferiority of rank, as fair game, and acted accordingly. But 
while we agree with one ofJohnson's bitterest sentences as to 
the immorality of Chesterfield's letters, we disagree with his 
styling his code of manners the manners of a dancing-master. 
Chesterfield was in himself a perfect instance of what he calls 
les manieres nobles • and this even Johnson allowed. 

" Talking of Chesterfield," Johnson said, " his manner was 
exquisitely elegant, and he had more knowledge than I ex- 
pected." Boswell : " Did you find, sir, his conversation to be 
of a superior sort ?" Johnson : " Sir, in the conversation which 



chesterfield's letters to his son. 225 

I had with him, I had the best right to superiority, for it was 
upon philology and literature." 

It was well remarked how extraordinary a thing it was that 
a man who loved his son so entirely should do all he could to 
make him a rascal. And Foote even contemplated bringing 
on the stage a father who had thus tutored his son ; and intend- 
ed to show the son an honest man in every thing else, but prac- 
ticing his father's maxims upon him, and cheating him. 

"It should be so contrived," Johnson remarked, referring 
to Foote's plan, "that the father should be the only sufferer 
by the son's villainy, and thus there would be poetical justice." 
"Take out the immorality," he added, on another occasion, 
"and the book (Chesterfield's Letters to his Son) should be 
put into the hands of every young gentleman." 

We are inclined to differ, and to confess to a moral taint 
throughout the whole of the Letters ; and even had the immo- 
rality been expunged, the false motives, the deep, invariable 
advocacy of principles of expediency would have poisoned 
what otherwise might be of effectual benefit to the minor vir- 
tues of polite society. 

K 2 



THE ABBE SCARRON. 

There is an Indian or Chinese legend, I forget which, from 
which Mrs. Shelley may have taken her hideous idea of Fran- 
kenstein. We are told in this allegory that, after fashioning 
some thousands of men after the most approved model, endow- 
ing them with all that is noble, generous, admirable, and lova- 
ble in man or woman, the eastern Prometheus grew weary in 
his work, stretched his hand for the beer-can, and draining it 
too deeply, lapsed presently into a state of what Germans call 
" other-man-uess." There is a simpler Anglo-Saxon term for 
this condition, but I spare you. The eastern Prometheus went 
on seriously with his work, and still produced the same perfect 
models, faultless alike in brain and leg. But when it came to 
the delicate finish, when the last touches were to be made, his 
hand shook a little, and the more delicate members went awry. 
It was thus that instead of the power of seeing every color 
properly, one man came out with a pair of optics which turned 
every thing to green, and this verdancy probably transmitted 
itself to the intelligence. Another, to continue the allegory, 
whose tympanum had slipped a little under the unsteady fin- 
gers of the man-maker, heard every thing in a wrong sense, 
and his life was miserable, because, if you sang his jjraises, he 
believed you were ridiculing him, and if you heaped abuse 
upon him, he thought you were telling lies of him. 

But as Prometheus Orientalis grew more jovial, it seems to 
have come into his head to make mistakes on purpose. " I'll 
have a friend to laugh with," quoth he; and when-warned by 
an attendant Yaksha, or demon, that men who laughed one 
hour often wept the next, he swore a lusty oath, struck his 
thumb heavily on a certain bump in the skull he was complet- 
ing, and holding up his little doll, cried, " Here is one who will 
laugh at every thing !" 

I must now add what the legend neglects to tell. The 
model laugher succeeded well enough in his own reign, but he 
could not beget a large family. The laughers who never weep, 
the real clowns of life, who do not, when the curtain drops, 
retire, after an infinitesimal allowance of " cordial," to a half- 
starved, complaining family, with brats that cling round his 
parti-colored stockings, and cry to him — not for jokes — but for 



228 WHO COMES HERE? 

bread, these Laughers, I say, are few and far between. You 
should, therefore, be doubly grateful to me for introducing to 
you now one of the most famous of them ; one who, with all 
right and title to be lugubrious, was the merriest man of his age. 

On Shrove Tuesday, in the year 1638, the good city of Mans 
was in a state of great excitement : the carnival was at its 
height, and every body was gone mad for one day before turn- 
ing pious for the long, dull forty days of Lent. The market- 
place was filled w T ith maskers in quaint costumes, each wilder 
and more extravagant than the last. Here were magicians 
with high peaked hats covered with cabalistic signs, here East- 
ern sultans- of the medieval model, with very fierce looks and 
very large cimeters : here Amadis de Gaul with a w r agging 
plume a yard high, here Pantagruel, here harlequins, here 
Huguenots ten times more lugubrious than the despised secta- 
ries they mocked, here Caesar and Pompey in trunk hose and 
Roman helmets, mid a mass of other notabilities who were 
great favorites in that day, appeared. 

But who comes here ? What is the meaning of these 
roars of laughter that greet the last mask who runs into the 
market-place ? Why do all the women and children hurry 
together, calling up one another, and shouting with delight ? 
What is this thing ? Is it some new species of bird thus cov- 
ered with feathers and down ? In a few minutes the little 
figure is surrounded by a crowd of boys and women, who be- 
gin to pluck him of his borrowed plumes, while he chatters to 
them like a magpie, whistles like a song-bird, croaks like a 
raven, or in his natural character showers a mass of funny 
nonsense on them, till their laughter makes their sides ache. 
The little wretch is literally covered with small feathers from 
head to foot, and even his face is not to be recognized. The 
women pluck him behind and before ; he dances round and 
tries to evade their fingers. This is impossible; he breaks 
away, runs down the market pursued by a shouting crowd, is 
again surrounded, and again subjected to a plucking process. 
The bird must be stripped ; he must be discovered. Little by 
little his back is bared, and little by little is seen a black jerk- 
in, black stockings, and, wonder upon wonder ! the bands of 
a canon. Now they have cleared his face of its plumage, and 
a cry of disgust and shame hails the disclosure. Yes, this 
curious masker is no other than a reverend abbe, a young 
canon of the cathedral of Mans ! " This is too much — it is 
scandalous — it is disgraceful. The church must be respected, 
the sacred order must not descend to such frivolities." The 
people, lately laughing, are now furious at the shameless abbe, 
and not his liveliest wit can save him ; they threaten and cry 



A MAD FREAK AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 229 

shame on him, and in terror of his life, he beats his way 
through the crowd, and takes to his heels. The mob follows 
hooting and savage. The little man is nimble ; those well- 
shaped legs — qui orit si bien danse — stand him in good stead. 
Down the streets, and out of the town go hare and hounds. 
The pursuers gain on him — a bridge, a stream filled with tall 
reeds, and delightfully miry, are all the hope of refuge he sees 
before him. He leaps gallantly from the bridge in among the 
osiers, and has the joy of listening to the disappointed curses 
of the mob, when reaching the stream their quarry is no- 
where to be seen. The reeds conceal him, and there he lin- 
gers till nightfall, when he can issue from his lurking-place 
and escape from the town. 

Such was the mad freak which deprived the Abbe Scarron 
of the use of his limbs for life. His health was already ruined 
when he indulged in this caprice ; the damp of the river brought 
on a violent attack, which closed with palsy, and the gay young 
abbe had to pay dearly for the pleasure of astonishing the citi- 
zens of Mans. The disguise was easily accounted for — he had 
smeared himself with honey, ripped open a feather-bed, and 
rolled himself in it. 

This little incident gives a good idea of what Scarron was 
in his younger days — ready at any time for any wild caprice. 

Paul Scarron was the son of a Conseiller du Parlement of 
good family, resident in Paris. He w r as born in 1610, and his 
early days would have been wretched enough, if his elastic 
spirits had allowed him to give way to misery. His father 
was a good-natured, weak-minded man, who on the death of 
his first wife married a second, who, as one hen will peck at 
another's chicks, w r ould not, as a stepmother, leave the little 
Paul in peace. She w T as continually putting her own children 
forward, and ill treating the late "anointed" son. The father 
gave in too readily, and young Paul was glad enough to be 
set free from his unhappy home. There may be some excuse 
in this for the licentious living to which he now gave himself 
up. He was heir to a decent fortune, and of course thought 
himself justified in spending it beforehand. Then, in spite of 
his quaint little figure, he had something attractive about him, 
for his merry face was good-looking, if not positively hand- 
some. If we add to this, spirits as buoyant as an Irishman's 
— a mind that not only saw the ridiculous wherever it existed, 
but could turn the most solemn and awful themes to laughter, 
a vast deal of good-nature, and not a little assurance — we can 
understand that the young Scarron was a favorite with both men 
and women, and among the reckless pleasure-seekers of the day 
soon became one of the wildest. In short, he was a fast young 



230 MAKING AN ABBE OP SCARRON. 

Parisian, with as little care for morality or religion as any 
youth who saunters on the Boulevards of the French capital 
to this day. 

But his stepmother was not content with getting rid of 
young Paul, but had her eye also on his fortune, and therefore 
easily persuaded her husband that the service of the church 
was precisely the career for which the young reprobate was 
fitted. There was an uncle who was Bishop of Grenoble, and 
a canonry could easily be got for him. The fast youth was 
compelled to give into this arrangement, but declined to take 
full orders ; so that while drawing the revenue of his stall, he 
had nothing to do with the duties of his calling. Then, too, it 
was rather a fashionable thing to be an abbe, -especially a gay 
one. The position placed you on a level with people of all ranks. 
Half the court was composed of love-making ecclesiastics, and 
the soutane was a kind of diploma for wit and wickedness. 
Viewed in this light, the church was as jovial a profession as 
the army, and the young Scarron went to the full extent of the 
letter allowed to the black gown. It was only such stupid 
superstitious louts as those of Mans, who did not know any 
thing of the ways of Paris life, who could object to such lit- 
tle freaks as he loved to indulge in. 

The merry little abbe was soon the delight of the Marais. 
This distinct and antiquated quarter of Paris was then the 
May-fair of that capital. Here lived in ease, and contempt of 
the bourgeoisie, the great, the gay, the courtier, and the wit. 
Here Marion de Lorme received old cardinals and young 
abbes ; here were the salons of Madame de Martel, of the 
Comtesse de la Suze, who changed her creed in order to avoid 
seeing her husband in this world or the next, and the famous 
— or infamous — Ninon de l'Enclos ; and at these houses young 
Scarron met the courtly Saint-Evremond, the witty Sarrazin, 
and the learned, but arrogant Voiture. Here he read his skits 
and parodies, here travestied Virgil, made epigrams on Riche- 
lieu, and poured out his indelicate but always laughable wit- 
ticisms. But his indulgences were not confined to intrigues ; 
he also drank deep, and there was not a pleasure within his 
reach, which he ever thought- of denying himself. He laughed 
at religion, thought morality a nuisance, and resolved to be 
merry at all costs. 

The little account was brought in at last. At the age of 
five-and-twenty his constitution was broken up. Gout and 
rheumatism assailed him alternately or in leash. He began 
to feel the annoyance of the constraint they occasioned ; he re- 
gretted those legs which had figured so well in a ronde or a 
minuet, and those hands which had played the lute to dames 



c 
scarron' s lament to pellisson. 231 

more fair than modest ; and, to add to this, the pain he suf- 
fered was not slight. He sought relief in gay society, and 
was cheerful in spite of his sufferings. At length came the 
Shrove Tuesday and the feathers ; and the consequences were 
terrible. He was soon a prey to doctors, whom he believed 
in no more than in the church of which he was so great a light. 
His legs were no longer his own, so he was obliged to borrow 
those of a chair. He was soon tucked down into a species of 
dumb-waiter on castors, in which he could be rolled about in a 
party, just as the late Lady Charleville was. In front of this 
chair was fastened a desk, on which he wrote; for too wise 
to be overcome by his agony, he drove it away by cultivating 
his imagination, and in this way some of the most fantastic 
productions in French literature were composed by this quaint 
little abbe. 

Nor was sickness his only trial now. Old Scarron was a 
citizen, and had, what was then criminal, sundry ideas of the 
liberty of the nation. He saw with disgust the tyranny of 
Richelieu, and joined a party in the Parliament to oppose the 
cardinal's measures. He even had the courage to speak open- 
ly against one of the court edicts ; and the pitiless cardinal, 
who never overlooked any offense, banished him to Touraine, 
and naturally extended his animosity to the conseiller's son. 
This happened at a moment at which the cripple believed him- 
self to be on the road to favor. He had already won that of 
Madame de Hautefort, on whom Louis XIII. had set his affec- 
tions, and this lady had promised to present him to Anne of 
Austria. The father's honest boldness put a stop to the son's 
intended servility, and Scarron lamented his fate in a letter to 
Pellisson : 

"O mille ecus, par malheur retranches, 

Que vous pouviez m'epargner de peches ! 

Quand un valet me dlt, tremblaut et have, 

Nous n'avons plus de buches dans la cave 

Que pour aller jusqu'a demain matin, 

Je peste alors sur mon chien de destin, 

Sur le grand froid, sur le bois de la greve, 

Qu'on vend si cher, et qui si-tot s'acheve. 

Je jure alors, et meme je me'dis 

De Taction de mon pere etourdi, 

Quand sans songer a ce qu'il allait faire 

II m'ebaucha sous un astre contraire, 

Et m'acheva par un discours maud it 

Qu'il fit depuis sur un certain edit." 

The father died in exile : his second wife had spent the 
greater part of the son's fortune, and secured the rest for her 
own children. Scarron was left with a mere pittance, and, to 
complete his troubles, was involved in a lawsuit about the prop- 



232 THE OFFICE OF THE QUEEN'S PATIENT. 

erty. The cripple, with his usual impudence, resolved to plead 
his own cause, and did it only too well ; he made the judges 
laugh so loud that they took the whole thing to he a farce on 
his part, and gave — most ungratefully — judgment against him. 

Glorious days were those for the penniless, halcyon days for 
the toady and the sycophant. There was still much of the old 
oriental munificence about the court, and sovereigns like Maz- 
arin and Louis XIV. granted pensions for a copy of flattering 
verses, or gave away places as the reward of a judicious speech. 
Sinecures were legion, yet to many a holder they were no sin- 
ecures at all, for they entailed constant servility and a com- 
plete abdication of all freedom of opinion. 

Scarron was nothing more than a merry buffoon. Many 
another man has gained a name for his mirth, but most of 
them have been at least independent. Scarron seems to have 
cared for nothing that was honorable or dignified. He laugh- 
ed at every thing but money, and at that he smiled, though it 
is only fair to say that he was never avaricious, but only cared 
for ease and a little luxury. 

When Richelieu died, and the gentler, but more subtle 
Mazarin mounted his throne, Madame de Hautefort made 
another attempt to present her jwotege to the queen, and this 
time succeeded. Anne of Austria had heard of the quaint 
little man who could laugh over a lawsuit in which his whole 
fortune was staked, and received him graciously. He begged 
for some place to support him. What could he do ? What 
was he fit for? "Nothing, your majesty, but the important 
office of The Queen's Patient ; for that I am fully qualified." 
Anne smiled, and Scarron from that time styled himself " par 
la grace de Dieu, le malade de la Reine." But there was no 
stipend attached to this novel office. Mazarin procured him a 
pension of 500 crowns. He was then publishing his "Typhon, 
or the Gigantomachy," and dedicated it to the cardinal, with 
an adulatory sonnet. He forwarded the great man a splen- 
didly-bound copy, which was accepted with nothing more than 
thanks. In a rage the author suppressed the sonnet and sub- 
stituted a satire. This piece was bitterly cutting, and terri- 
bly true. It galled Mazarin to the heart, and he was undig- 
nified enough to revenge himself by canceling the poor little 
pension of £60 per annum which had previously been granted 
to the writer. Scarron having lost his pension, soon afterward 
asked for an abbey, but was refused. " Then give me," said 
he, "a simple benefice, so "simple, indeed, that all its duties will 
be comprised in believing in God." But Scarron had the sat- 
isfaction of gaining a great name among the cardinal's many 
enemies, and with none more so than De Retz, then coadjti- 



scarron's description of himself. 233 

teur* to the Archbishop of Paris, and already deeply implica- 
ted in the Fronde movement. To insure the favor of this ris- 
ing man, Scarron determined to dedicate to him a work he was 
just about to publish, and on which he justly prided himself 
as by far his best. This was the " Roman Comique," the only 
one of his productions which is still read. That it should be 
read, I can quite understand, on account not only of the ease 
of its style, but of the ingenuity of its improbable plots, the 
truth of the characters, and the charming bits of satire which 
are found here and there, like gems, amid a mass of mere fun. 
The scene is laid at Mans, the town in which the author had 
himself perpetrated his chief follies ; and many of the charac- 
ters were probably drawn from life, while it is likely enough 
that some of the stories were taken from facts which had there 
come to his knowledge. As in many of the romances of that 
age, a number of episodes are introduced into the main story, 
which consists of the adventures of a strolling company. These 
are mainly amatory, and all indelicate, while some are positive- 
ly dirty, and as coarse as any thing in French literature. Scar- 
ron had little of the clear wit of Rabelais to atone for this ; but 
he makes up for it, in a measure, by the utter absurdity of some 
of his incidents. Not the least curious part of the book is the 
Preface, in which he gives a description of himself, in order to 
contradict, as he affirms, the extravagant reports circulated 
about him, to the effect that he was set upon a table in a cage, 
or that his hat was fastened to the ceiling by a pulley, that he 
might " pluck it up or let it down, to do compliment to a friend, 
who honored him with a visit." This description is a tolera- 
ble specimen of his style, and we give it in the quaint language 
of an old translation, published in 1741 : 

" I am past thirty, as thou may'st see by the back of my 
Chair. If I live to be forty, I shall add the Lord knows how 
many Misfortunes to those I have already suffered for these 
eight or nine Years last past. There was a Time when my 
Stature was not to be found Fault with, tho' now 'tis of the 
smallest. My Sickness has taken me shorter by a Foot. My 
Head is somewhat too big, considering my Height ; and my 
Face is full enough, in all Conscience, for one that carries such 
a Skeleton of a Body about him. I have Hair enough on my 
Head not to stand in need of a Peruke ; and 'tis gray, too, in 
spight of the Proverb. My Sight is good enough, tho' my 
Eyes are large ; they are of a blue Color, and one of them is 
sunk deeper into my Head than the other, which was occa- 
sional by my leaning on that Side. My Nose is well enough 
mounted. My Teeth, which in the Days of Yore look'd like 
* Coadjuteui: — A high office in the Church of Rome. 



234 IMPROVIDENCE AND SERVILITY. 

a Row of square Pearl, are now of an Ashen Color ; and in a 
few Years more, will have the Complexion of a Small -coal 
Man's Saturday Shirt. I have lost one Tooth and a half on 
the left Side, and two and a half precisely on the right; and I 
have two more that stand somewhat out of their Ranks. My 
Legs and Thighs, in the first place, compose an obtuse Angle, 
then a right one, and lastly an acute. My Thighs and Body 
make another; and my Head, leaning perpetually over my 
Belly, I fancy makes me not very unlike the Letter Z. My 
Arms are shortened, as well as my Legs ; and my Fingers as 
well as my Arms. In short, I am a living Epitome of human 
Misery. This, as near as I can give it, is my Shape. Since I 
am got so far, I will e'en tell thee something of my Humor. 
Under the Rose, be it spoken, Courteous Reader, I do this 
only to swell the Bulk of my Book, at the Request of the 
Bookseller — the poor Dog, it seems, being afraid he should be 
a Loser by this Impression, if he did not give Buyer enough 
for his Money." 

This allusion to the publisher reminds us that, on the sup- 
pression of his pension — on hearing of which Scarron only said, 
" I should like, then, to suppress myself" — he had to live on 
the profits of his works. In later days it was Madame Scar- 
ron herself who often carried them to the bookseller's, when 
there was not a penny in the house. The publisher was Qui- 
net, and the merry wit, when asked whence he drew his in- 
come, used to reply with mock haughtiness, " De mon Mar- 
quisat de Quinet." His comedies, which have been described 
as mere burlesques — I confess I have never read them, and 
hope to be absolved — were successful enough, and if Scarron 
had known how to keep what he made, he might sooner or 
later have been in easy circumstances. He knew neither that 
nor any other art of self-restraint, and, therefore, was in per- 
petual vicissitudes of riches and penury. At one time he could 
afford to dedicate a piece to his sister's greyhound, at another 
he was servile in his address to some prince or duke. 

In the latter spirit, he humbled himself before Mazarin, in 
spite of the publication of his " Mazarinade," and was, as he 
might have expected, repulsed. He then turned to Fouquet, 
the new Surintendant de Finances, who was liberal enough 
with the public money, which he so freely embezzled, and ex- 
tracted from him a pension of 1600 francs (about £64). In 
one way or another, he got back a part of the property his 
stepmother had alienated from him, and obtained a prebend in 
the diocese of Mans, which made up his income to something 
more respectable. 

He was now able to indulge to the utmost his love of soci- 



THE SOCIETY AT SCARRON's. 235 

ety. In his apartment, in the Rue St. Louis, he received all 
the leaders of the Fronde, headed by De Retz, and bringing 
with them their pasquinades on Mazarin, which the easy Italian 
read and laughed at and pretended to heed not at all. Poli- 
tics, however, was not the staple of the conversation at Scar- 
ron's. He was visited as a curiosity, as a clever buffoon, and 
those who came to see, remained to laugh. He kept them all 
alive by his coarse, easy, impudent wit ; in which there was 
more vulgarity and dirtiness than ill-nature. He had a fund 
of bonhonnnie, which set his visitors at their ease, for no one 
was afraid of being bitten by the chained dog they came to 
pat. His salon became famous ; and the admission to it was a 
diploma of wit. He kept out all the dull, and ignored all the 
simply great. Any man who could say a good thing, tell a 
good story, write a good lampoon, or mimic a fool, was a wel- 
come guest. Wits mingled with pedants, courtiers with poets. 
Abbes and gay women were at home in the easy society of 
the cripple, and circulated freely round his dumb-waiter. 

The ladies of the party w T ere not the most respectable in 
Paris, yet some who were models of virtue .met there, Avithout 
a shudder, many others who were patterns of vice. Ninon de 
l'Enclos — then young — though age made no alteration in her 
— and already slaying her scores, and ruining her hundreds of 
admirers, there met Madame de SeA r igne, the most respectable, 
as well as the most agreeable, woman of that age. Mademoi- 
selle de Scudery, leaving, for the time, her tAvelve-volume ro- 
mance, about Cyrus and Ibrahim, led on a troop of Moliere's 
Precieuses Ridicules, and here recited her A T erses, and talked 
pedantically to Pellisson, the ugliest man in Paris, of whom 
Boileau Avrote : 

"L'or meme a Pellisson donne nn teint de beaute." 

Then there was Madame de la Sabliere, avIio Avas as masculine 
as her husband the marquis Avas effeminate ; the Duchesse de 
Lesdiguieres, A\ T ho Avas so anxious to be thought a wit that she 
employed the Chevalier de Mere to make her one; and the 
Comtesse de la Suze, a clever but foolish woman. 

The men Avere poets, coin-tiers, and pedants. Menage Avith 
his tiresome memory, Montreuil and Marigni the song-Avriters, 
the elegant De Grammont, Turenne, Coligni, the gallant Abbe 
Tetu, and many another celebrity, thronged the rooms where 
Scarron sat in his curious Avheelbarrow. 

The conversation Avas decidedly light ; often, indeed, ob- 
scene, in spite of the presence of ladies ; but always Avitty. 
The hostility of Scarron to the reigning cardinal Avas a great 
recommendation, and Avhen all else flagged, or the cripple had 



236 FKAN<J0ISE n'AUBIGNE's DEBUT. 

an unusually sharp attack, he had but to start with a line of 
his " Mazarinade," and ont came a fresh lampoon, a new cari- 
cature, or fresh rounds of wit fired off at the Italian, from the 
well-filled cartridge-boxes of the guests, many of whom kept 
their mots ready made up for discharge. 

But a change came over the spirit of the paralytic's dream. 
In the Rue St. Louis, close to Scarron's, lived a certain Mad- 
ame Neuillant, who visited him as a neighbor, and one day 
excited his curiosity by the romantic history of a mother and 
daughter, who had long lived in Martinique, who had been 
ruined by the extravagance and follies of a reprobate husband 
and father ; and were now living in great poverty — the daugh- 
ter being supported by Madame de Neuillant herself. The 
good-natured cripple was touched by this story, and begged 
his neighbor to bring the unhappy ladies to one of his parties. 
The evening came ; the abbe was, as usual, surrounded by a 
circle of lady-wits, dressed in the last fashions, flaunting their 
fans, and laughing merrily at his sallies. Madame de Neuil- 
lant was announced, and entered, followed by a simply-dressed 
lady, with the melancholy face of one broken down by misfoi-- 
tunes, and a pretty girl of fifteen. The contrast between the 
neAV-comers and the fashionable habituees around him at once 
struck the abbe. The girl was not only badly, but even shab- 
bily dressed, and the shortness of her gown showed that she 
had grown out of it, and could not afford a new one. The 
grandes dames turned upon her their eye-glasses, and whis- 
pered comments behind their fans. She was very pretty, they 
said, very interesting, elegant, lady-like, and so on ; but, par- 
bleu ! how shamefully mal mise ! The new-comers were led 
up to the cripple's dumb-waiter, and the grandes dames drew 
back their ample petticoats as they passed. The young girl 
was overcome with shame ; their whispers reached her ; she 
cast down her pretty eyes, and growing more and more con- 
fused, she could bear it no longer, and burst into tears. The 
abbe and his guests were touched by her shyness, and endeav- 
ored to restore her confidence. Scarron himself leaned over, 
and whispered a few kind words in her ear ; then breaking 
out into some happy pleasantry, he gave her time to recover 
her composure. Such was the first debut, in Parisian society, 
of FranQoise d'Aubigne, who was destined, as Madame Scar- 
ron, to be afterward one of its leaders, and, as Madame de 
Maintenon, to be its ruler. 

Some people are cursed with bad sons — some with erring 
daughters. Framboise d'Aubigne was long the victim of a 
wicked father. Constans d'Aubigne belonged to an old and 
honorable family, and was the son of that famous old Hugue- 



THE SAD STORY OF LA BELLE INDIENNE. 239 

not general, Theodore-Agrippa d'Aubigne, who fought for a 
long time under Henry of Navarre, and in his old age wrote 
the history of his times. To counterbalance this distinction, 
the son Constans brought all the discredit he could on the 
family. After a reckless life, in which he squandered his patri- 
mony, he married a rich widow, and then, it is said, contrived 
to put her out of the way. He was imprisoned as a murderer, 
but acquitted for want of evidence. The story goes, that he 
was liberated by the daughter of the governor of the jail, 
whom he had seduced in the prison, and whom he married 
when free. He sought to retrieve his fortune in the island of 
Martinique, ill-treated his wife, and eventually ran away and 
left her and her children to their fate. They followed him to 
France, and found him again incarcerated. Madame d'Aubigne 
was foolishly fond of her good-for-nothing spouse, and lived 
with him in his cell, where the little FranQoise, who had been 
born in prison, was now educated. 

Rescued from starvation by a worthy Huguenot aunt, Mad- 
ame de Villette, the little girl was brought up as a Protest- 
ant, and a very stanch one she proved for a time. But Mad- 
ame d'Aubigne, who was a Romanist, would not allow her 
to remain long under the Calvinistic lady's protection, and 
sent her to be converted by her godmother, the Madame de 
Neuillant above mentioned. This woman, who was as merci- 
less as a woman can be, literally broke her into Romanism, 
treated her like a servant, made her groom the horses, and 
comb the maid's hair, and when all these efforts failed, sent 
her to a convent to be finished off. The nuns did by specious 
reasoning what had been begun by persecution, and young 
Frangoise, at the time she was introduced to Scarron, was a 
highly respectable member of " the only true church." 

Madame d'Aubigne was at this time supporting herself by 
needle- work. Her sad story won the sympathy of Scarron's 
guests, who united to relieve her wants. La belle JTncUenne, 
as the cripple styled her, soon became a favorite at his parties, 
and lost her shyness by degrees. Ninon de l'Enclos, who did 
not want heart, took her by the hand, and a friendship thus 
commenced between that inveterate Lais and the future wife 
of Louis XIV. which lasted till death. 

The beauty of Franpoise soon brought her many admirers, 
among whom was even one of Ninon's slaves ; but as mar- 
riage was not the object of these attentions, and the young 
girl would not relinquish her virtue, she remained for some 
time unmarried, but respectable. Scarron was particularly 
fond of hei', and well knew that, portionless as she was, the 
poor girl would have but little chance of making a match. 



240 MATRIMONIAL CONSIDERATIONS. 

His kindness touched her, his wit charmed her ; she pitied his 
infirmities, and, as his neighbor, frequently saw and tried to 
console him. On the other hand the cripple, though forty 
years old, and in a state of health which it is impossible to de- 
scribe, fell positively in love with the young girl, who alone of 
all the ladies who visited him combined wit with perfect mod- 
esty. He pitied her destitution. There was mutual pity, and' 
we all know what passion that feeling is akin to. 

Still, for a paralytic, utterly unfit for marriage in any point 
of view, to offer to a beautiful young girl, would have seemed 
ridiculous, if not unpardonable. But let us take into account 
the difference in ideas of matrimony between ourselves and the 
French. We must remember that marriage has always been 
regarded among our neighbors as a contract for mutual bene- 
fit, into which the consideration of money of necessity entered 
largely. It is true that some qualities are taken as equivalents 
for actual cash : thus, if a young man has a straight and well- 
cut nose, he may sell himself at a higher price than young 
Lefevre there with the hideous pug ; if a girl is beautiful, 
the marquis will be content with some thousands of francs less 
for her dower than if her hair were red or her complexion 
frreclaimably brown. If Julie has a pretty foot, a svelte waist, 
and can play the piano thunderingly, or sing in the charming- 
est soprano, her ten thousand francs are quite as acceptable 
as those of stout, awkward, glum-faced Jeannette. The fault- 
less boots and yellow kids of young Adolj)he counterbalance 
the somewhat apocryphal vicomte of ill-kempt and ill-attired 
Henri. 

But then there must be some fortune. A Frenchman is so 
much in the habit of expecting it, that he thinks it almost a 
crime to fall in love where there is none. FranQoise, pretty, 
clever, agreeable as she was, was penniless, and even worse, 
she was the daughter of a man who had been imprisoned on 
suspicion of murder, and a woman who had gained her liveli- 
hood by needle-work. All these considerations made the fancy 
of the merry abbe less ridiculous, and Francjoise herself being 
sufficiently versed in the ways of the world to understand the 
disadvantage under which she labored, was less amazed and 
disgusted than another girl might have been, when, in due 
course, the cripple offered her himself and his dumb-waiter. 
He had little more to give — his pension, a tiny income from 
his prebend and his Marquisat de Quinet. 

The offer of the little man Avas not so amusing as other epi- 
sodes of his life. He went honestly to work ; represented to 
her what a sad lot would hers be, if Madame de Keuillant 
died, and what were the temptations of beauty without a pen- 



" scarron's wife will live foeever." 241 

ny. His arguments were more to the point than delicate, and 
he talked to the young girl as if she was a woman of the world. 
Still, she accepted him, cripple as he was. 

Madame de Neuillant made no objection, for she was only 
too glad to be rid of a beauty who ate and drank, but did not 
marry. 

On the making of the contract, Scarron's fun revived. When 
asked by the notary what was the young lady's fortune, he 
replied : " Four louis, two large wicked eyes, one fine figure, 
one pair of good hands, and lots of mind." " And what do 
you give her ?" askecUtke lawyer. " Immortality," replied he, 
with the air of a bombastic poet. " The names of the wives 
of kings die with them — that of Scarron's wife will live for- 
ever !" 

His marriage obliged him to give up his canonry, which he 
sold to Menage's man-servant, a little bit of simony which 
was not even noticed in those days. It is amusing to find a 
man who laughed at all religion, insisting that his wife should 
make a formal avowal of the Romish faith. Of the character 
of this marriage we need say no more than that Scarron had 
at that time the use of no more than his eyes, tongue, and 
hands. Yet such was then, as now, the idea of matrimony 
in France, that the young lady's friends considered her for- 
tunate. 

Scarron in love was a picture which amazed and amused the 
whole society of Paris, but Scarron married was still more 
curious. The queen, when she heard of it, said that Franpoise 
woukl be nothing but a useless bit of furniture in his house. 
She proved not only the most useful appendage he could have, 
but the salvation alike of his soul and his reputation. The 
woman who charmed Louis XIV. by her good sense, had 
enough of it to see Scarron's faults, and prided herself on re- 
forming him as far as it was possible. Her husband had 
hitherto been the great Nestor of indelicacy, and when he 
was induced to give it up, the rest followed his example. 
Madame Scarron checked the license of the abbe's conversa- 
tion, and even worked a beneficial change in his mind. 

The joviality of their parties still continued. Scarron had 
always been famous for his petits soitpers, the fashion of which 
he introduced, but as his poverty would not allow him to give 
them in proper style, his friends made a picnic of it, and each 
one either brought or sent his own dish of ragout, or whatever 
it might be, and his own bottle of wine. This does not seem 
to have been the case after the marriage, however ; for it is 
related as a proof of Madame Scarron's conversational powers, 
that, when one evening a poorer supper than usual was served, 

L 



242 scarron's last moments. 

the waiter whispered in her ear, "Tell them another story, 
Madame, if you please, for we have no joint to-night." Still 
both guests and host could well afford to dispense with the 
coarseness of the cripple's talk, which might raise a laugh, but 
must sometimes have caused disgust, and the young wife of 
sixteen succeeded in making him purer both in his conversa- 
tion and his writings. 

The household she entered was indeed a villainous one. 
Scan-on rather gloried in his early delinquencies, and, to add 
to this, his two sisters had characters far from estimable. One 
of them had been maid of honor to the Princesse de Conti, but 
had given up her appointment to become the mistress of the 
Due de Tremes. The laugher laughed even at his sister's dis- 
honor, and allowed her to live in the same house on a higher 
etage. When, on one occasion, some one called on him to so- 
licit the lady's interest with the duke, he coolly said, " You 
are mistaken ; it is not I who know the duke ; go «up to the 
next story." The offspring of this connection he styled " his 
nephews after the fashion of the Marais." Fran^oise did her 
best to reclaim this sister and to conceal her shame, but the 
laughing abbe made no secret of it. 

But the laugher was approaching his end. His attacks 
became more and more violent: still he laughed at them. 
Once he was seized with a terrible choking hiccough, which 
threatened to suffocate him. The first moment he could speak 
he cried, " If I get well, I'll write a satire on the hiccough." 
The priests came about him, and his wife did what she could 
to bring him to a sense of his future danger. He laughed at 
the priests and at his wife's fears. She spoke of hell. " If 
there is such a place," he answered, " it won't be for me, for 
without you I must have had my hell in this life." The priest 
told him, by way of consolation, that " God had visited him 
more than any man." " He does me too much honor," an- 
swered the mocker. "You should give him thanks," urged 
the ecclesiastic. " I can't see for what," was the shameless 
answer. 

On his death-bed he parodied. a will, leaving to Corneille 
" two hundred pounds of patience ; to Boileau (with whom 
he had a long feud), the gangrene; and to the Academy, the 
power to alter the French language as they liked." His leg- 
acy in verse to his wife is grossly disgusting, and quite unfit 
for quotation. Yet he loved her well, avowed that his chief 
grief in dying was the necessity of leaving her, and begged 
her to remember him sometimes, and to lead a virtuous life. 

His last moments were as jovial as any. When he saw 
his friends weej>ing around him he shook his head and cried, 



A LESSON FOR, GAY AND GBAVE. 243 

" I shall never make you weep as much as I have made you 
laugh." A little later a softer thought of hope came across 
him. " No more sleeplessness, no more gout," he murmured ; 
"the Queen's patient will be well at last." At length the 
laugher was sobered. In the presence of death, at the gates 
of a new world, he muttered, half afraid, " I never thought it 
was so easy to laugh at death," and so expired. This was in 
October, 1660, when the cripple had reached the age of fifty. 
Thus died a laugher. It is unnecessary here to trace the 
story of his widow's strange rise to be the wife of a king. 
Scarron was no honor to her, and in later years she tried to 
forget his existence. Boileau fell into disgrace for merely 
mentioning his name before the king. Yet Scarron was in 
many respects a better man than Louis ; and, laugher as he 
was, he had a good heart. There is a time for mirth and a 
time for mourning, the Preacher tells us. Scarron never learn- 
ed this truth, and he laughed too much and too long. Yet let 
us not end the laugher's life in sorroAV : 

"It is well to be merry and wise," etc. 

Let us be merry as the poor cripple, who bore his sufferings 
so well, and let us be wise too. There is a lesson for gay and 
grave in the life of Scarron, the laugher. 



FRANCOIS, DUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULT, AND THE 
DUC DE SAINT-SIMON. 

The precursor of Saint-Simon, the model of Lord Chester- 
field, this ornament of his age belonged, as well as Saint- 
Simon, to that state of society in France which was character- 
ized — as Lord John Russell, in his " Memoirs of the Duchess 
of Orleans," tells us — by an idolatry of power and station. 
" God would not condemn a person of that rank," Avas the ex- 
clamation of a lady of the old regime, on hearing that a noto- 
rious sinner, "Pair de France," and one knows not what else, 
had gone to his account impenitent and unabsolved; and 
though the sentiment may strike us as profane, it was, doubt- 
less, genuine. 

Rank, however, was often adorned by accomplishments 
which, like an exemption from rules of conduct, it almost 
claimed as a privilege. Good -breeding was a science in 
France; natural to a peasant, even, it was studied as an 
epitome of all the social virtues. " JSfetre pas polV was the 
sum total of all dispraise : a man could only recover from it 
by splendid valor or rare gifts ; a woman could not hope to 
rise out of that Slough of Despond to which good-breeding 
never came. We were behind all the arts of civilization in 
England, as Francois de Rochefoucault (we give the orthog- 
raphy of the present day) was in his cradle. This brilliant 
personage, who combined the wit and the moralist, the court- 
ier and the soldier, the man of literary tastes and the senti- 
mentalist par excellence, was born in 1613. In addition to his 
hereditary title of due, he had the empty honor, as Saint-Si- 
mon calls it, of being Prince de Marsillac, a designation which 
was lost in that of De la Rochefoucault — so famous even to 
the present day. As he presented himself at the court of the 
regency, over which Anne of Austria nominally presided, no 
youth thei-e was more distinguished for his elegance or for 
the fame of his exploits during the wars of the Fronde than 
this youthful scion of an illustrious house. Endowed by na- 
ture with a pleasing countenance, and, what was far more im- 
portant in that fastidious region, an air of dignity, he display- 
ed wonderful contradictions in his character and bearing. He 
had, says Madame de Maintenon, " beaucoup d* esprit, et pen 
de savoir;" an expressive phrase. "He was," she adds, "pli- 



246 THE HOTEL DE ROCHEFOUCAULT. 

ant in nature, intriguing, and cautious;" nevertheless she nev- 
er, she declares, possessed araore steady friend, nor one more 
confiding and better adapted to advise. Brave as he was, he 
held personal valor, or affected to do so, in light estimation. 
His ambition was to rule others. Lively in conversation, 
though naturally pensive, he assembled around him all that 
Paris or Versailles could present of wit and intellect. 

The old Hotel de Rochefoucault, in the Rue de Seine, in 
the Faubourg St. Germain, in Paris, still grandly recalls the 
assemblies in which Racine, Boileau, Madame de Sevigne, the 
La Fayettes, and the famous Duchesse de Lougueville, used 
to assemble. The time-honored family of De la Rochefoucault 
still preside there ; though one of its fairest ornaments, the 
young, lovely, and pious Duchesse de la Rochefoucault of our 
time, died in 1852 — one of the first known victims to diphthe- 
ria in France, in that unchanged old locality. There, whei'e 
the De Longuevilles, the Mazarins, and those who had formed 
the famous council of state of Anne of Austria had disappear- 
ed, the poets and wits who gave to the age of Louis XIV. its 
true brilliancy, collected around the Due de la Rochefoucault. 
What a scene it must have been, in those days when, as Buf- 
fon said of the earth in spring, " tout four •mille de vie!" Let 
us people the salon of the Hotel de Rochefoucault with visions 
of the past ; see the host there, in his chair, a martyr to the 
gout, which he bore with all the cheerfulness of a Frenchman, 
and picture to ourselves the great men who were handing him 
his cushion, or standing near his fauteuil. 

Racine's joyous face may be imagined as he comes in fresh 
from the College of Harcourt. Since he was born in 1639, he 
had not arrived at his zenith till La Rochefoucault was almost 
past his prime. For a man at thirty-six in France can no lon- 
ger talk prospectively of the departure of youth ; it is gone. 
A single man of thirty, even in Paris, is " un vieux gargon :" 
life begins too soon and ends too soon with those pleasant 
sinners, the French. And Racine, when he was first routed 
out of Port Royal, where he was educated, and presented to 
the whole Faubourg St. Germain, beheld his patron, La Roche- 
foucault, in the position of a disappointed man. An early ad- 
venture of his youth had humbled, perhaps, the host of the 
Hotel de Rochefoucault. At the battle of St. Antoine, where 
he had distinguished himself, a musket ball had nearly deprived 
hirn of sight. On this occasion he had quoted these lines, 
taken from the tragedy of "A IcyonneeP It must, however, 
be premised that the famous Duchesse de Longueville had 
urged him to engage in the wars of the Fronde. To her these 
lines were addressed : 






RACINE AND HIS PLAYS. 247 

"Pour meriter son cceur, pour plaire a ses beaux yeux, 
J'ai fait la guerre aux Rois, je l'aurais faite aux dieux." 

But now he had broken off his intimacy with the duchesse, 
and he therefore parodied these lines : 

"Pour ce cceur inconstant, qu'enfin je connais mieux, 
J'ai fait la guerre aux Hois, j'en ai perdue les yeux." 

Nevertheless La Rochefoucault was still the gay, charm- 
ing", witty host and courtier. Racine composed, in 1660, his 
"Nymphe de Seine,'''' in honor of the marriage of Louis XIV., 
aud was then brought into notice of those whose notice was 
no empty compliment, such as, in our day, illustrious dukes 
pay to more illustrious authors, by asking them to be jumbled 
in a crowd at a time when the rooks are beginning to caw. 
We catch, as they may, the shadow of a dissolving water-ice, 
or see the exit of an unattainable tray of negus. No ; in the 
days of Racine, as in those of Halifax and Swift in England, 
solid fruits grew out of fulsome praise ; and Colbert, then min- 
ister, settled a pension of six hundred livres, as francs were 
called in those days (twenty -four pounds), on the poet. And 
with this the former pupil of Port Royal was fain to be con- 
tent. Still he was so poor that he almost went into the church, 
an uncle offering to resign him a priory of his order if he would 
become a regular. lie was a candidate for orders, and wore a 
sacerdotal dress when he wrote the tragedy of " Theagenes," 
and that of the " Freres Ennemis," the subject of which was 
given him by Moliere. 

He continued, in spite of a quarrel with the saints of Port 
Royal, to produce noble dramas from time to time, but quitted 
theatrical pursuits after bringing out (in 1677) "Phedre," that 
chef-d'oeuvre not only of its author, but, as a performance, of 
the unhappy but gifted Rachel. Corneille was old, and Paris 
looked to Racine to supply his place, yet he left the theatrical 
World forever. Racine had been brought up with deep relig- 
ious convictions ; they could not, however, preserve him from 
a mad, unlawful attachment. He loved the actress Champ- 
mesle : but repentance came. He resolved not only to write 
no more plays, but to do penance for those already given to 
the world. He was on the eve of becoming, in his penitence, 
a Carthusian friar, when his religious director advised marriage 
instead. He humbly did as he was told, and united himself to 
the daughter of a treasurer for France, of Amiens, by whom 
he had seven children. It was only at the request of Madame 
de Maintenon that he wrote " Esther" for the convent of St. 
Cyr, where it was first acted. 

His death was the result of his benevolent, sensitive nature. 



'248 LA ROCHEFOUCAULX'S WIT AND SENSIBILITY. 

Having drawn up an excellent paper on the miseries of the 
people, he gave it to Madame de Maintenon to read it to the 
king. Louis, in a transport of ill-humor, said, " What ! does 
he suppose because he is a poet that he ought to be minister 
of state ?" Racine is said to have been so wounded by this 
speech that he was attacked by a fever and died. His de- 
cease took place in 1G99, nineteen years after that of La 
Rochefoucault, who died in 1680. 

Among the circle whom La Rochefoucault loved to assem- 
ble was Boileau, Despreaux, and Madame de Sevigne — the one 
whose wit and the other whose grace completed the delights 
of that salon. A life so prosperous as La Rochefoucault's had 
but one cloud — the death of his son, who was killed during 
the passage of the French troops over the Rhine. We attach 
to the character of this accomplished man the charms of wit ; 
we may also add the higher attractions of sensibility. Notwith- 
standing the worldly and selfish character which is breathed 
forth in his " Maxims and Reflections," there lay at the bot- 
tom of his heart true piety. Struck by the death of a neigh- 
bor, this sentiment seems even on the point of being express- 
ed ; but, adds Madame de Sevigne, and her phrase is untrans- 
latable, "il ri 'est pas effleure." 

All has passed away ! the Fronde has become a memory, 
not a realized idea. Old people shake their heads, and talk 
of Richelieu ; of his gorgeous palace at Rueil, with its lake 
and its prison thereon, and its mysterious dungeons, and its 
avenues of chestnuts, and its fine statues ; and of its cardinal, 
smiling, while the worm that never dieth is eating into his 
very heart; a seared conscience, and playing the fine gentle- 
man to fine ladies in a rich stole, and with much garniture of 
costly lace ; while beneath all is the hair shirt, that type of 
penitence and sanctity which he ever wore as a salvo against 
all that passion and ambition that almost burst the beating 
heart beneath that hair shirt. Richelieu has gone to his fa- 
thers. Mazarin comes on the scene ; the wily, grasping Italian. 
He too vanishes ; and forth, radiant in youth, and strong in 
power, comes Louis, and the reign of politeness and periwigs 
begins. 

The Due de Saint-Simon, perhaps the greatest portrait- 
painter of any time, has familiarized us with the greatness, the 
littleness, the graces, the defects of that royal actor on the 
stage of Europe, whom his own age entitled Louis the Great. 
A wit, in his writings, of the first order — if we comprise un- 
der the head of wit the deepest discernment, the most pene- 
trating satire — Saint-Simon was also a soldier, philosopher, a 
reformer, a Trappist, and, eventually, a devotee. Like all 



LOOKING OUT FOR A WIFE. 249 

young men who wished for court favor, he began by fighting : 
Louis cared little for carpet knights. He entered, however, 
into a scene which he has chronicled with as much fidelity as 
our journalists do a police report, and sat quietly down to 
gather up observations — not for his own fame, not even for 
the amusement of his children or grandchildren — but for the 
edification of posterity yet a century afar ofi" his own time. 
The treasures were buried until 1829. 

A word or two about Saint-Simon and his youth. At nine- 
teen he was destined by his mother to be married. Now ev- 
ery one knows how marriages are managed in France, not only 
in the time of Saint-Simon, but even to the present day. A 
mother, or an aunt, or a grandmother, or an experienced friend, 
looks out ; be it for son, be it for daughter, it is the business 
of her life. She looks and she finds : family, suitable ; fortune, 
convenient ; person, pas mal ; principles, Catholic, with a due 
abhorrence of heretics, especially English ones. After a time, 
the lady is to be looked at by the unhappy pre'tendu • a church, 
a mass, or vespers, being very often the opportunity agreed. 
The victim thinks she will do. The proposal is discussed by 
the two mammas ; relatives are called in ; all goes well ; the 
contract is signed; then, a measured acquaintance is allowed: 
but no tete-a-tetes ; no idea of love. " What ! so indelicate a 
sentiment before marriage! Let me not hear of it," cries 
mamma, in a sanctimonious panic. " Love ! Quelle betise /" 
adds mon pere. 

But Saint-Simon, it seems, had the folly to wish to make 
a marriage of inclination. Rich, pair de France, his father — 
an old roue, who had been page to Louis XIII. — dead, he felt 
extremely alone in the world. He cast about to see whom he 
could select. The Due de Beauvilliers had eight daughters ; 
a misfortune, it may be thought, in France or any where else. 
Not at all : three of the young ladies were kept at home, to 
be married ; the other five were at once disposed of, as they 
passed the unconscious age of infancy, in convents. Saint- 
Simon was, however, disappointed. He offered, indeed ; first 
for the eldest, who was not then fifteen years old ; and find- 
ing that she had a vocation for a conventual life, went on to 
the third, and was going through the whole family, when he 
was convinced that his suit was impossible. The eldest daugh- 
ter happened to be a disciple of Fenelon's, and was on the very 
eve of being vowed to Heaven. 

Saint-Simon went off to La Trappe, to console himself for 
his disappointment. There had been an old intimacy between 
Monsieur La Trappe and the father of Saint-Simon ; and this 
friendship had induced him to buy an estate close to the an- 

L2 



250 saint-simon's court life. 

cient abbey where La Trappe still existed. The friendship 
became hereditary ; and Saint-Simon, though still a youth, re- 
vered and loved the penitent rechise of Ferte an Vidame, of 
which Lamartine has written so grand and so poetical a de- 
scription. 

Let ns hasten over his marriage with Mademoiselle de Lor- 
ges, who proved a good wife. It was this time a grandmother, 
the Marechale de Lorges, who managed the treaty ; and Saint- 
Simon became the happy husband of an innocent blonde, with 
a majestic air, though only fifteen years of age. Let us hasten 
on, passing over his presents ; his six hundred louis, given in 
a corbeille full of what he styles " galanteries ;" his mother's 
donation of jewelry ; the midnight mass, by which he was 
linked to the child who scarcely knew him ; let us lay all that 
aside, and turn to his court life. 

It was at this juncture that Louis XIV., who had hitherto 
dressed with great simplicity, indicated that he desired his 
court should appear in all possible magnificence. Instantly 
the shops were emptied. Even gold and silver appeared 
scarcely rich enough. Louis himself planned many of the 
dresses for any public occasion. Afterward he repented of 
the extent to which he had permitted magnificence to go, but 
it was then impossible to check the excess. 

Versailles, henceforth in all its grandeur, contains an apart- 
ment which is called, from its situation, and the opportunities 
it presents of looking down upon the actors of the scene around, 
i' CEil de Boeuf. The revelations of the (Eil de Ba?uf, during 
, the reign of Louis XV., form one of the most amazing pictures 
of wickedness, venality, power misapplied, genius polluted, that 
was ever drawn. No one that reads that infamous book can 
wonder at the revolution of 1 789. Let us conceive Saint-Simon 
to have taken his stand here, in this region, pure in the time of 
Louis XIV., comparatively, and note we down his comments 
on men and women. 

He has journeyed up to court from La Trappe, which has 
fallen into confusion and quarrels, to which the most saintly 
precincts are peculiarly liable. 

The history of Mademoiselle de la Valliere was not, as he 
tells us, of his time. He hears of her death, and so indeed 
does the king, with emotion. She expired in 1710, in the 
Rue St. Jacques, at the Carmelite convent, where, though she 
was in the heart of Paris, her seclusion from the world had 
long been complete. Among the nuns of the convent none 
was so humble, so penitent, so chastened as this once lovely 
Louise de la Valliere, now, during a weary term of thirty-five 
years, "Marie de la Misericorde." She had fled from the 



THE HISTORY OF LOUISE DE LA VALLIERE. 251 

scene of her fall at one-and-thirty years of age. Twice had 
she taken refuge among the " blameless vestals," whom she 
envied as the broken-spirited envy the passive. First, she 
escaped from the toi'ture of witnessing the king's passion for 
Madame de Montespan, by hiding herself among the Bene- 
dictine sisters at St. Cloud. Thence the king fetched her in 
person, threatening to order the cloister to be burnt. Next, 
Lauzun, by the command of Louis, sought her, and brought 
her aveo main forte. The next time she fled no more ; but 
took a public farewell of all she had too fondly loved, and 
throwing herself at the feet of the queen, humbly enti'eated 
her pardon. Never since that voluntary sepulture had she 
ceased, during those long and weary years, to lament — as the 
heart-stricken can alone lament — her sins. In deep contrition 
she learned the death of her son by the king, and bent her 
head meekly beneath the chastisement. 

Three years before her death the triumphant Athenee de 
Montespan had breathed her last at Bourbon. If Louis XIV. 
had nothing else to repent of, the remorse of these two wom- 
en ought to have wrung his heart. Athenee de Montespan 
was a youthful, innocent beauty, fresh from the seclusion of 
provincial life, when she attracted the blighting regards of 
royalty. A fete was to be given ; she saw, she heard that she 
•was its object. She entreated her husband to take her back 
to his estate in Guyenne, and to leave her there till the king 
had forgotten her. Her husband, in fatal confidence, trusted 
her resistance, and refused her petition. It was a life-long 
sorrow ; and he soon found his mistake. He lived and died 
passionately attached to his wife, but never saw her after her 
fall. 

When she retired from court, to make room for the empire 
of the subtle De Maintenon, it was her son, the Due de Maine, 
who induced her, not from love, but from ambition, to with- 
draw. She preserved, even in her seclusion in the country, 
the style of a queen, which she had assumed. Even her nat- 
ural children by the king were never allowed to sit in her pres- 
ence, on a fauteuil, but were only permitted to have small 
chairs. Every one went to pay her court, and she spoke to 
them as if doing them an honor ; neither did she ever return 
a visit, even from the royal family. Her fatal beauty endured 
to the last : nothing could exceed her grace, her tact, her good 
sense in conversation, her kindness to every one. 

But it was long before her restless spirit could find real 
peace. She threw herself on the guidance of the Abbe de la 
Tour ; for the dread of death was ever upon her. He sug- 
gested a terrible test of her penitence. It was, that she 



252 A MEAN ACT OF LOUIS QUATOKZE. 

should entreat her husband's pardon, and return to him. It 
was a fearful struggle with herself, for she was naturally 
haughty and high spirited; but she consented. After long 
agonies of hesitation, she wrote to the injured man. Her 
letter was couched in the most humble language ; but it re- 
ceived no reply. The Marquis de Montespan, through a third 
person, intimated to her that he w r ould neither receive her, 
nor see her, nor hear her name pronounced. At his death she 
wore widow's weeds; but never assumed his arms, nor adopt- 
ed his liveries. 

Henceforth, all she had was given to the poor. When 
Louis meanly cut down her pension, she sent word that she 
was sorry for the poor, not for herself; they would be the 
losers. She then humbled herself to the very dust : wore the 
hardest cloth next her fair skin ; had iron bracelets ; and an 
iron girdle, which made wounds on her body. Moreover, she 
punished the most unruly members of her frame : she kept 
her tongue in bounds ; she ceased to slander ; she learned to 
bless. The fear of death still haunted her; she lay in bed 
with every curtain drawn, the room lighted up with wax can- 
dles ; while she hired watchers to sit up all night, and insisted 
that they should never cease talking or laughing, lest, when 
she woke, the fear of death might come over her affrighted 
spirit. 

She died at last after a few hours' illness, having just time 
to order all her household to be summoned, and before them 
to make a public confession of her sins. As she lay expiring, 
blessing God that she died far away from the children of her 
adulterous connection, the Comte d'Antin, her only child by 
the Marquis de Montespan, arrived. Peace and trust had then 
come at last to the agonized woman. She spoke to him about 
her state of mind, and expired. 

To Madame de Maintenon the event would, it was thought, 
be a relief; yet she wept bitterly on hearing of it. The king 
showed, on the contrary, the utmost indifference, on learning 
that one whom he had once loved so much was gone forever. 

All has passed away ! The (Eil de Boevfis now important 
only as being pointed out to strangers ; Versailles is a show- 
place, not a habitation. Saint-Simon, who lived until 1775, 
was truly said to have turned his back on the new age, and to 
live in the memories of a former world of wit and fashion. 
He survived until the era of the " Encyclopedia" of Voltaire 
and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He lived, indeed, to hear that 
Montesquieu was no more. How the spirit of Louis XIV. 
spoke in his contemptuous remarks on Voltaire, whom he 
would only call Arouet : " The son of my father's and my own 
notary." 






saint-simon's memoirs of his own time. 253 

At length, after attaining his eightieth year, the chronicler, 
who knew the weaknesses, the vices, the peculiarities of man- 
kind, even to a hair's breadth, expired ; having long given up 
the court and occupied himself, while secluded in his country- 
seat, solely with the revising and amplification of his wonder- 
ful Memoirs. 

No works, it has been remarked, since those of Sir Walter 
Scott, have excited so much sensation as the Memoirs of his 
own time, by the soldier, embassador, and Trappist, Due de 
Saint-Simon. 



HORACE WALPOLE. 

"•Had this elegant writer," remarks the compiler of " Wal- 
poliana," " composed memoirs of his own life, an example au- 
thorized by eminent names, ancient and modern, every other 
pen must have been dropped in despair, so true was it that 
' he united the good sense of Fontenelle with the Attic salt 
and graces of Count Anthony Hamilton.' " 

But " Horace" was a man of great literary modesty, and al- 
ways undervalued his own efforts. His life was one of little 
incident : it is his character, his mind, the society around him, 
the period in which he shone, that give'the charm to his cor- 
respondence, and the interest to his biography. 

Besides, he had the weakness common to several other fine 
gentlemen who have combined letters and haut ton, of being 
ashamed of the literary character. The vulgarity of the court, 
its indifference to all that was not party writing, whether po- 
lemical or political, cast a shade over authors in his time. 

Never was there, beneath all his assumed Whig principles, 
a more profound aristocrat than Horace Walpole. He was, 
by birth, one of those well-descended English gentlemen who 
have often scorned the title of noble, and who have repudiated 
the notion of merging their own ancient names in modern 
titles. The commoners of England hold a proud pre-eminence. 
When some low-born man entreated James I. to make him a 
gentleman, the well-known answer was, "Na, na, I canna ! I 
could mak thee a lord, but none but God Almighty can mak 
a gentleman." 

Sir Robert Walpole, afterward minister tb George II., and 
eventually Lord Orford, belonged to an ancient family in Nor- 
folk ; he was a third son, and was originally destined for the 
church, but the death of his elder brethren having left him 
heir to the family estate, in 1698, he succeeded to a property 
which ought to have yielded him £2000 a year, but which 
was crippled with various incumbrances. In order to relieve 
himself of these, Sir Robert married Catherine Shorter, the 
granddaughter of Sir John Shorter, who had been illegally 
and arbitrarily appointed Lord Mayor of London by James II. 

Horace was her youngest child, and was born in Arlington 
Street, on the 24th of September, 1717, O. S. Six years after- 
ward he was inoculated for the small-pox, a precaution which 



256 AVALPOLE S PARENTAGE. 

he records as worthy of remark, since the operation had then 
only recently been introduced by Lady Mary Wortley Mon- 
tagu from Turkey. 

He is silent, however, naturally enough, as to one important 
point — his real parentage. The character of his mother was 
by no means such as to disprove an assertion which gained 
general belief: this was, that Horace was the offspring, not of 
Sir Robert Walpole, but of Carr, Lord Hervey, the eldest son 
of the Earl of Bristol, and the elder brother of Lord Hervey 
whose " Memoirs of the Court of George II." are so generally 
known. Carr, Lord Hervey, was witty, eccentric, and sar- 
castic : and from him Horace Walpole is said to have inherit- 
ed his wit, his eccentricity, his love of literature, and his pro- 
found contempt for all mankind, excepting only a few mem- 
bers of a cherished and exclusive clique. 

In the Notes of his life which Horace "Walpole left for the 
use of his executor, Robert Berry, Esq., and of his daughter, 
Miss Berry, he makes this brief mention of Lady Walpole : 
"My mother died in 173*7." He was then twenty years of age. 

But beneath this seemingly slight recurrence to his mother, 
a regret which never left him through life was buried. Like 
Cowper, he mourned, as the profoundest of all sorrows, the 
loss of that life-long friend. 

"My mother, when I learn'd that thou wast dead, 
Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed ? 
Hovered thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son ? 
Wretch even then, life's journey just begun." 

Although Horace in many points bore a strong resemblance 
to Sir Robert Walpole, he rarely if ever received from that 
jovial, heartless, able man, disgrace as he was to the English 
aristocracy, any proof of affection. An outcast from his fa- 
ther's heart, the whole force of the boy's love centred in his 
mother; yet in after life no one reverenced Sir Robert Wal- 
pole so much as his supposed son. To be adverse to the min- 
ister was to be adverse to the unloved son who cherished his 
memory. What " my father" thought, did, and said, was law ; 
what his foes dared to express was heresy. Horace had the 
family mania strong upon him : the world was made for 
Walpoles, whose views were never to be controverted, nor 
whose faith impugned. Yet Horace must have witnessed, 
perhaps without comprehending it, much disunion at home. 
Lady Walpole, beautiful and accomplished, could not succeed 
in riveting her husband to his conjugal duties. Gross licen- 
tiousness was the order of the day, and Sir Robert was among 
the most licentious : he left his lovely wife to the perilous at- 
tentions of all the young courtiers who fancied that by court- 



"little Horace" in Arlington street. 257 

ing the Premier's wife they could secure Walpole's good offi- 
ces. Sir Robert, according to Pope, was one of those who — 

"Never made a friend in private life, 
And was, besides, a tyrant to his wife." 

At all events, if not a tyrant, he was indifferent to those cir- 
cumstances which reflected upon him, and were injurious to 
her. He was conscious that he had no right to complain of 
any infidelity on her part, and he left her to be surrounded by 
men whom he knew to be profligates of the most dangerous 
pretensions to wit and elegance. 

It was possibly not unfrequently that Horace, his mother's 
pet, gleaned in the drawing-rooms of Arlington Street his first 
notions of that persiflage which was the fashion of the day. 
We can fancy him a precocious, old-fashioned little boy, at his 
mother's apron-string, while Carr, Lord Hervey, was paving 
his devoirs ; we see him gazing with wondering eyes at Pulte- 
ney, Earl of Bath, with his blue ribbon across his laced coat ; 
while compassionating friends, observing the pale-faced boy in 
that hot-house atmosphere, in which both mind and body were 
like forced plants, prophesied that "little Horace" could not 
possibly live to be a man. 

He survived, however, two sisters, who died in childhood, 
and became dearer and dearer to his fond mother. 

In his old age, Horace delighted in recalling anecdotes of 
his infancy: in these his mother's partiality largely figured. 
Brought up among courtiers and ministers, his childish talk 
was all of kings and princes ; and he was a gossip both by in- 
clination and habit. His greatest desire in life was to see the 
king — George I., and his nurses and attendants augmented his 
wish by their exalted descriptions of the grandeur which he 
affected, in after life, to despise. He entreated his mother to 
take him to St. James's. When relating the incidents of the 
scene in which he was first introduced to a court, Horace Wal- 
pole speaks of the " infinite good-nature of his father, who nev- 
er thwarted any of his children," and " suffered him," he says, 
" to be too much indulged." 

Some difficulties attended the fruition of the forward boy's 
wish. The Duchess of Kendal was jealous of Sir Robert Wal- 
pole's influence with the king; her aim was to bring Lord 
Bolingbroke into power. The childish fancy was, neverthe- 
less, gratified : and under his mother's care he was conducted 
to the apartments of the Duchess of Kendal in St. James's. 

" A favor so unusual to be asked by a boy of ten years old," 
he afterward wrote in his " Reminiscences," " was still too 
slight to be refused to the wife of the first minister and her 



258 CHARACTERISTIC ANECDOTE OF GEORGE I. 

darling child." However, as it was not to be a precedent, the 
interview was to be private, and at night. 

It was ten o'clock in the evening when Lady Walpole, lead- 
ing her son, was admitted into the apartments of Melusina de 
Schulenberg, Countess of Walsingham, who passed under the 
name of the Duchess of Kendal's niece, but who was, in fact, 
her daughter, by George I. The polluted rooms in which 
Lady Walsingham lived were afterward occupied by the two 
mistresses of George II. — the Countess of Suffolk, and Mad- 
ame de Walmoden, Countess of Yarmouth. 

With Lady Walsingham, Lady Walpole and her little son 
waited until, notice having been given that the king had come 
down to supper, he was led into the presence of " that good 
sort of man," as he calls George I. That monarch was pleased 
to permit the young courtier to kneel down and kiss his hand. 
A few words were spoken by the august personage, and Hor- 
ace was led back into the adjoining room. 

But the vision of that " good sort of man" was present to 
him when, in old age, he wrote down his recollections for his 
beloved Miss Berry. By the side of a tall, lean, ill-favored old 
German lady — the Duchess of Kendal — stood a pale, short, 
elderly man, with a dark tie-wig, hi a plain coat and waist- 
coat ; these and his breeches were all of snuff-colored cloth, 
and his stockings of the same color. By the blue ribbons 
alone could the young subject of this " good sort of man" dis- 
cern that he was in the presence of majesty. Little interest 
could be elicited in this brief interview, yet Horace thought it 
his painful duty, being also the son of a prime minister, to shed 
tears when, with the other scholars of Eton College, he walked 
in the procession to the proclamation of George II. And no 
doubt he was one of very few personages in England whose eyes 
were moistened for that event. Nevertheless, there was some- 
thing of bonhommie in the character of George I. that one 
misses in his successor. His love of punch, and his habit of 
becoming a little tipsy over his private dinners with Sir Rob- 
ert Walpole, were English as well as German traits, and were 
regarded almost as condescensions ; and then he had a kind of 
slow wit, that was turned upon the venial officials whose per- 
quisites were at their disgraceful height in his time. 

" A strange country this," said the monarch, in his most 
clamorous German : " one day, after I came to St. James's, I 
looked out of the window, and saw a park, with walks, laurels, 
etc. ; these they told me were mine. The next day Lord Chet- 
wynd, the ranger of my park, sends me a brace of carp out of 
my canal ; I was told, thereupon, that I must give five guineas 
to Lord Chetwynd's porter for bringing me my own fish, out 



WALP0LES EDUCATION. 259 

of my own canal, in my oicn park !" In spite of some agreea- 
ble qualities, George I. was, however, any thing but a " good 
sort of man." It is difficult how to rank the two first Georges ; 
both were detestable as men, and scarcely tolerable as mon- 
archs. The foreign deeds of George I. were stained with the 
supposed murder of Count Konigsmark : the English career 
of George II. was one of the coarsest profligacy. Their exam- 
ple was infamous. 

His father's only sister having become the second wife of 
Charles Lord Townshend, Horace was educated with his cous- 
ins ; and the tutor selected was Edward Weston, the son of 
Stephen, Bishop of Exeter : this preceptor was afterward en- 
gaged in a controversy with Dr. Warburton, concerning the 
" Naturalization of the Jews." By that learned, haughty dis- 
putant, he is tenned " a gazetteer by profession — by inclina- 
tion a Methodist." Such was the man who guided the dawn- 
ing intellect of Horace Walpole. Under his care he remained 
until he went, in 1727, to Eton. But Walpole's was not mere- 
ly a scholastic education : he was destined for the law — and, 
on going up to Cambridge, was obliged to attend lectures on 
civil law. He went from Eton to King's College — where he 
was, however, more disposed to what are termed accomplish- 
ments than to deep reading. At Cambridge he even studied 
Italian : at home he learned to dance and fence ; and took les- 
sons in drawing from Bernard Lens, drawing-master to the 
Duke of Cumberland and his sisters. It is not to be wondered 
at that he left Cambridge without taking a degree. 

But fortune was lying, as it were, in wait for him ; and va- 
rious sinecures had been reserved for the Minister's youngest 
son : first, he became Inspector of the Imports and Exports in 
the Customs ; but soon resigned that post to be Usher of the 
Exchequer. " And as soon," he writes, " as I became of age 
I took possession of two other little patent places in the Ex- 
chequer, called Comptroller of the Pipe, and Clerk of the Es- 
treats. They had been held for me by Mr. Fane." 

Such was the mode in which younger sons were then pro- 
vided for by a minister ; nor has the unworthy system died 
out in our time, although greatly modified. 

Horace was growing up meantime, not an awkward, but a 
somewhat insignificant youth, with a short, slender figure : 
which always retained a boyish appearance when seen from 
behind. His face was commonplace, except when his really 
expressive eyes sparkled with intelligence, or melted into the 
sweetest expression of kindness. But his laugh was forced 
and uncouth : and even in his smile there was a hard, sarcastic 
expression that made one regret that he smiled. 



260 SCHOOLBOY DAYS. 

He was now in possession of an income of £1700 annually, 
and he looked naturally to the Continent, to which all young 
members of the aristocracy repaired, after the completion of 
their collegiate life. 

He had been popular at Eton : he was also, it is said, both 
beloved and valued at Cambridge. In reference to his Etoni- 
an days he says, in one of his letters : " I can't say I am sorry 
I was never quite a schoolboy : an expedition against barge- 
men, or a match at cricket, may be very pretty things to rec- 
ollect ; but, thank my stars, I can remember things that are 
very near as pretty. The beginning of my Roman history was 
spent in the asylum, or conversing in Egeria's hallowed grove ; 
not in thumping and pummeliug King Amulius's herdsmen."* 

"I remember," he adds, "when I was at Eton, and Mr. 
Bland had set me on an extraordinary task, I used sometimes 
to pique myself upon not getting it, because it was not imme- 
diately my school business. What! learn more than I was 
absolutely forced to learn ! I felt the weight of learning that ; 
for I Avas a blockhead, and pushed above my parts"\ 

Popular among his schoolfellows, Horace formed friendships 
at Eton which mainly influenced his after life. Richard West, 
the son of West, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and the grand- 
son, on his mother's side, of Bishop Burnet : together with a 
youth named Assheton — formed, with the poet Gray, and 
Horace himself, what the young wit termed the " Quadruple 
Alliance." Then there was the " triumvirate," George Mon- 
tagu, Charles Montagu, and Horace — next came George Sel- 
wyn and Hanbury Williams ; lastly, a retired, studious youth, 
a sort of foil to all these gay, brilliant young wits — a certain 
William Cole, a lover of old books, and of quaint prints. And 
in all these boyish friendships, some of which were carried 
from Eton to Cambridge, may be traced the foundation of the 
Horace Walpole, of Strawberry Hill and of Berkeley Square. 
To Gray he owed his ambition to be learned, if possible — po- 
etical, if nature had not forbidden ; to the Montagus, his dash 
and spirit ; to Sir Hanbury Williams, his turn for jeux d' esprit, 
as a part of the completion of a fine gentleman's education ; 
to George Selwyn, his appreciation of what was then consid- 
ered wit — but which we moderns are not worthy to appreci- 
ate. Lord Hertford and Henry Conway, Walpole's cousins, 
were also his schoolfellows ; and for them he evinced through- 
out his long life a warm regard. William Pitt, Lord Chat- 
ham — chiefly remembered at Eton for having been flogged 
for being out of bounds — was a contemporary, though not an 
intimate of Horace Walpole's at Eton. 

* Life by Warburton, p. 70. t Ibid. p. 63. 



BOYISH FRIENDSHIPS. 261 

His regard for Gray did him infinite credit : yet never were 
two men more dissimilar as they advanced in life. Gray had 
no aristocratic birth to boast ; and Horace dearly loved birth, 
refinement, position, all that comprises the cherished term 
"quality." Thomas Gray, more illustrious for the little his 
fastidious judgment permitted him to give to the then critical 
world, than many have been in their productions of volumes, 
was born in Cornhill — his father being a worthy citizen. He 
was just one year older than Walpole, but an age his senior 
in gravity, precision, and in a stiff resolution to maintain his 
independence. He made one fatal step, fatal to his friendship 
for Horace, when he forfeited — by allowing Horace to take 
him and pay his expenses during a long continental tour — his 
independence. Gray had "many points which made him vul- 
nerable to Walpole's shafts of ridicule ; and Horace had a host 
of faults which excited the stern condemnation of Gray. The 
author of the " Elegy" — which Johnson has pronounced to be 
the noblest ode in our language — was one of the most learned 
men of his time, " and was equally acquainted with the elegant 
and profound paths of science, and that not superficially, but 
thoroughly ; knowing in every branch of history, both natural 
and civil, as having read all the original historians of England, 
France, and Italy ; a great antiquarian, who made criticism, 
metaphysics, morals, and politics a principal part of his plan 
of study — who was uncommonly fond of voyages and travels 
of all sorts — and who had a fine taste in painting, prints, archi- 
tecture, and gardening." 

What a companion for a young man of taste and sympathy ! 
but the friends were far too clever long to agree. Gray was 
haughty, impatient, intolerant of the peculiarities of others, ac- 
cording to the author of " Walpoliana :" doubtless he detect- 
ed the vanity, the actual selfishness, the want of earnest feel- 
ing in Horace, which had all been kept down at school, where 
boys are far more unsparing Mentors than their betters. In 
vain did they travel en prince, and all at Walpole's expense : 
in vain did they visit courts, and receive affability from princes : 
in vain did he of Cornhill participate for a brief period in the 
attentions lavished on the son of a British Prime Minister: they 
quarreled — and we almost reverence Gray for it, more especial- 
ly when we find the author of " Walpoliana" expressing his 
conviction that " had it not been for this idle indulgence of his 
hasty temper, Mr. Gray would immediately on his return home 
have received, as usual, a pension or office from Sir Robert 
Walpole." We are inclined to feel contempt for the anony- 
mous writer of that amusing little book. 

After a companionship of four years, Gray, nevertheless, re- 



262 A DREARY DOOM. 

turned to London. He had been educated with the expecta- 
tion of being a barrister ; but finding that funds were wanting 
to pursue a legal education, he gave up a set of chambers in 
the Temple, which he had occupied previous to his travels, and 
retired to Cambridge. 

Henceforth what a singular contrast did the lives of these 
once fond friends present. In the small, quaint rooms of Pe- 
ter-House,* Gray consumed a dreary celibacy, consoled by the 
Muse alone, who — if other damsels found no charms in his 
somewhat priggish, wooden countenance, or in his manners, 
replete, it is said, with an unpleasant consciousness of superi- 
ority — never deserted him. His college existence, varied only 
by his being appointed Professor of Modern History, was, for 
a brief space, exchanged for an existence almost as studious in 
London. Between the years 1759 and 1762, he took lodgings, 
we find, in Southampton Row — a pleasant locality then, open- 
ing to the fields — in order to be near the British Museum, at 
that time just opened to the public. Here his intense studies 
were, it may be presumed, relieved by the lighter task of pe- 
rusing the Harleian Manuscripts ; and here he formed the ac- 
quaintance of Mason, a dull, affected poet, whose celebrity is 
greater as the friend and biographer of Gray, than even as the 
author of those verses on the death of Lady Coventry, in 
which there are, nevertheless, some beautiful lines. Gray died 
in college — a doom that, next to ending one's days in a jail or 
a convent, seems the dreariest. He died of the gout : a suit- 
able, and, in that region and in those three-bottle days, almost 
an inevitable disease ; but there is no record of his having been 
intemperate. 

While Gray was poring over dusty manuscripts, Horace was 
beginning that career of prosperity which was commenced by 
the keenest enjoyment of existence. He has left us, in his 
Letters, some brilliant passages, indicative of the delights of 
his boyhood and youth. Like him, we linger over a period 
still fresh, still hopeful, still generous in inqmlse — still strong 
in faith in the world's worth — before we hasten on to portray 
the man of the world, heartless, not wholly, perhaps, but wont 
to check all feeling till it was well-nigh quenched ; little-mind- 
ed; bitter, if not spiteful; with many acquaintances and scarce 
one friend — the Horace Walpole of Berkeley Square and Straw- 
berry Hill. 

" Youthful passages of life are," he says, " the chippings of 

Pitt's diamond, set into little heart-rings with mottoes ; the 

stone itself more worth, the filings more gentle and agreeable. 

Alexander, at the head of the world, never tasted the true 

* Gray migrated to Pembroke in 1756. 



walpole's description of youthful delights. 263 

pleasure that boys of his age have enjoyed at the head of a 
school. Little intrigues, little schemes and policies, engage 
their thoughts ; and at the same time that they are laying the 
foundation for their middle age of life, the mimic republic they 
live in furnishes materials of conversation for their latter age ; 
and old men can not be said to be children a second time with 
greater truth from any one cause, than their living over again 
their childhood in imagination." 

Again : " Dear George, were not the playing-fields at Eton 
food for all manner of flights ? No old maid's gown, though 
it had been tormented into all the fashions from King James 
to King George, ever underwent so many transformations as 
these poor plains have in my idea. At first I was contented 
with tending a visionary flock, and sighing some pastoral name 
to the echo of the cascade under the bridge. . . As I got fur- 
ther into Virgil and Clelia, I found myself transported from 
Arcadia to the garden of Italy ; and saw Windsor Castle in no 
other view than the Capitoli immobile saximi" 

Horace Walpole's humble friend Assheton was another of 
those Etonians who were plodding on to independence, while 
he, set forward by fortune and interest, was accomplishing 
reputation. Assheton was the son of a worthy man, who pre- 
sided over the Grammar School at Lancaster, upon a stipend 
of £32 a year. Assheton's mother had brought to her hus- 
band a small estate. This was sold to educate the " boys :" 
they were both clever and deserving. One became the fellow 
of Trinity College ; the other, the friend of Horace, rose into 
notice as the tutor of the young Earl of Plymouth ; then be- 
came a D.D., and a fashionable preacher in London ; was 
elected preacher at Lincoln's Inn ; attacked the Methodists ; 
and died, at fifty-three, at variance with Horace — this Asshe- 
ton, whom once he had loved so much. 

Horace, on the other hand, after having seen all that was 
most exclusive, attractive, and lofty, both in art and nature, 
came home without bringing, he declares, " one word of 
French or Italian for common use." A country tour in En- 
gland delighted him : the populousness, the ease in the people 
also, charmed him. " Canterbury was a paradise to Modena, 
Reggio, or Parma." He had, before he returned, perceived 
that nowhere except in England was there the distinction of 
" middling people ;" he now found that nowhere but in En- 
gland were middling houses. "How snug they are !" exclaims 
this scion of the exclusives. Then he runs on into an anecdote 
about Pope and Frederick, Prince of Wales. " Mr. Pope," 
said the prince, " you don't love princes." " Sir, I beg your 
pardon." " Well, you don't love kings, then." " Sir, I own 



264 THE POMFRETS. 

I like the lion better before bis claws are grown." The " Hor- 
ace Walpole" began now to creep out : never was he really at 
home except in a court atmosphere. Still he assumed, even at 
twenty-four, to be the boy. 

" You won't find me," he writes to Harry Conway, " much 
altered, I believe ; at least outwardly. I am not grown a bit 
shorter or fatter, but am just the same long, lean creature as 
usual. Then I talk no French but to my footman ; nor Italian, 
but to myself. What inward alterations may have happened 
to me you will discover best ; for you know 'tis said, one never 
knows that one's self. I will answer, that that part of it that 
belongs to you has not suffered the least change — I took care 
of that. For virtu, I have a little to entertain you — it is my 
sole pleasure. I am neither young enough nor old enough to 
be in love." 

Nevertheless, it peeps out soon after that the " Pomfrets" 
are coining back. Horace had known them in Italy. The 
Earl and Countess and their daughters were just then the 
very pink of fashion ; and even the leaders of all that was ex- 
clusive in the court. Half in ridicule, half in earnest, are the 
remarks which, throughout all the career of Horace, incessant- 
ly occur. " I am neither young enough nor old enough to be 
in love," he says ; yet that he was in love with one of the love- 
ly Fermors is traditionary still in the family — and that tradi- 
tion pointed at Lady Juliana, the youngest, afterward mar- 
ried to Mr. Penn. The Earl of Pomfret had been master of 
the horse to Queen Caroline : Lady Pomfret, lady of the bed- 
chamber. "My Earl," as the countess styled him, was ap- 
parently a supine subject to her ladyship's strong will and 
wrong-headed ability — which she, perhaps, inherited from her 
grandfather, Judge Jeffreys ; she being the daughter and heir- 
ess of that rash young Lord Jeffreys who, in a spirit of brag- 
gadocia, stopped the funeral of Dry den on its way to West- 
minster, promising a more splendid procession than the poor, 
humble cortege — a boast which he never fulfilled. Lady So- 
phia Fermor, the eldest daughter, who afterward became the 
wife of Lord Carteret, resembled, in beauty, the famed Mis- 
tress Arabella Fermor, the heroine of the " Rape of the Lock." 
Horace Walpole admired Lady Sophia — whom he christened 
Juno — much. Scarcely a letter drips from his pen — as a mod- 
ern novelist used to express it* — without some touch of the 
Pomfrets. Thus to Sir Horace Mann, then a diplomatist at 
Florence : 

" Lady Pomfret I saw last night. Lady Sophia has been ill 
with a cold ; her head is to be dressed French, and her body 
* The accomplished novelist, Mrs. Gore, famous for her facility. 



SIR THOMAS ROBINSON'S BALL. 205 

English, for which I am sorry, her figure is so fine in a robe. 
She is full as sorry as I am." 

Again, at a ball at Sir Thomas Robinson's, where four-and- 
twenty couples danced country-dances, in two sets, twelve and 
twelve, "there was Lady Sophia, handsomer than ever, but 
a little out of humor at the scarcity of minuets ;" however, as 
usual, dancing more than any body, and as usual too, she took 
out what men she liked, or thought the best dancers." .... 
" We danced ; for I country-danced till four, then had tea and 
coffee, and came home." Poor Horace ! Lady Sophia was 
not for a younger son, however gay, talented, or rich. 

His pique and resentment toward her mother, who had high- 
er views for her beautiful daughter, begins at this period to 
show itself, and never dies away. 

Lady Townshend was the wit who used to gratify Horace 
with tales of her whom he hated — Henrietta Louisa, Countess 
of Pomfret. 

" Lady Townshend told me an admirable history : it is of 
our friend Lady Pomfret. Somebody that belonged to the 
Prince of Wales said, they were going to court ; it was ob- 
jected that they ought to say to Carlton House; that the only 
court is where the king resides. Lady P., with her paltry 
air of significant learning and absurdity, said, ' Oh, Lord ! is 
there no court in England but the king's? Sure, there are 
many more ! There is the Court of Chancery, the Court of 
Exchequer, the Court of King's Bench, etc' Don't you love 
her ? Lord Lincoln does her daughter — Lady Sophia Fer- 
mor. He is come over, and met me and her the other night ; 
he turned pale, spoke to her several times in the evening, but 
not long, and sighed to me at going away. He came over all 
alone ; and not only his Uncle Duke (the Duke of Newcastle) 
but even Majesty is fallen in love with him. He talked to the 
king at his levee, without being spoken to. That was always 
thought high treason ; but I don't know how the gruff gentle- 
man liked it. And then he had been told that Lord Lincoln 
designed to have made the campaign, if we had gone to war; 
in short, he says Lord Lincoln is the handsomest man in En- 
gland." 

Horace was not, therefore, the only victim to a mother's 
ambition : there is something touching in the interest he from 
time to time evinces in poor Lord Lincoln's hopeless love. On 
another occasion, a second ball of Sir Thomas Robinson's, Lord 
Lincoln, out of prudence, dances with Lady Caroline Fitzroy, 
Mr. Conway taking Lady Sophia Fermor. " The two couple 
were just admirably mismatched, as every body soon perceived, 
by the attentions of each man to the woman he did not dance 

M 



266 POLITICAL SQUIBS. 

with, and the emulation of either lady : it was an admirable 
scene." 

All, however, was not country dancing : the young man, 
" too old and too young to be in love," was to make his way 
as a wit. He did so, in the approved way in that day of irre- 
ligion, in a political squib. On July 14th, 1742, he writes in 
his Notes, "I wrote the ' Lessons for the Day ? the 'Lessons 
for the Day' being the first and second chapters of the ' Book 
of Preferment.' " Horace was proud of this brochure, for he 
says it got about surreptitiously, and was "the original of 
many things of that sort." Various jeux cf esprit of a similar 
sort followed. A " Sermon on Painting," which was preached 
before Sir Robert Walpole, in the gallery at Houghton, by 
his chaplain ; " Patapan, or the Little White Dog," imitated 
from La Fontaine. No. 38 of the " Old Eugland Journal," 
intended to ridicule Lord Bath ; and then, in a magazine, was 
printed his "Scheme for a Tax on Message Cards and Notes." 
Next, the " Beauties," which was also handed about, and got 
into print. So that without the vulgarity of publishing, the 
reputation of the dandy writer was soon noised about. His 
religious tenets may or may not have been sound ; but at all 
events the tone of his mind assumed at this time a very differ- 
ent character to that reverent strain in which, when a youth 
at college, he had apostrophized those who bowed their heads 
beneath the vaulted roof of King's College, in his eulogium in 
the character of Henry VI. 

"Ascend the temple, join the vocal choir, 
Let harmony your raptured souls inspire. 
Hark how the tuneful, solemn organs blow, 
Awfully strong, elaborately slow ; 
Now to yon empyrean seats above 
Raise meditation on the wings of love. 
Now falling, sinking, dying to the moan 
Once warbled sad by Jesse's contrite son ; 
Breathe in each note a conscience through the sense, 
And call forth tears from soft-eyed Penitence." 

In the midst of all his gayeties, his successes, and perhaps 
his hopes, a cloud hovered over the destinies of his father. 
The opposition, Horace saw, in 1741, wished to ruin his father 
" by ruining his constitution." They wished to continue their 
debates on Saturdays, Sir Robert's only day of rest, when he 
used to rush to Richmond New Park, there to amuse himself 
with a favorite pack of beagles. Notwithstanding the minis- 
ter's indifference to this, his youngest son, Horace, felt bitterly 
what he considered a persecution against one of the most cor- 
rupt of modern statesmen. 

" Trust me, if we fall, all the grandeur, all the envied grand- 



THAT "ROGUE WALPOLE." 267 

eur of our house, will not cost me a sigh : it has given me no 
pleasure while we have it, and will give me no pain when I part 
with it. My liberty, my ease, and choice of my own friends 
and company, will sufficiently counterbalance the crowds of 
Downing Street. I am so sick of it all, that if we are victori- 
ous or not, I propose leaving England in the spring." 

The struggle was not destined to last long. Sir Robert 
was forced to give up the contest and be shelved with a peer- 
age. In 1742, he was created Earl of Orforcl, and resigned. 
The wonder is that, with a mortal internal disease to contend 
with, he should have faced his foes so long. Verses ascribed 
to Lord Heiwey ended, as did all the squibs of the day, with a 
fling at that " rogue Walpole." 

'•For though you have made that rogue Walpole retire, 
You are out of the frying-pan into the fire : 
But since to the Protestant line I'm a friend, 
I tremble to think how these changes may end." 

Horace, in spite of affected indifference, felt his father's 
downfall poignantly. He went, indeed, to court, in spite of 
a cold, taken in an unaired house ; for the prime minister now 
quitted Downing Street for Arlington Street. The court was 
crowded, he found, with old ladies, the wives of patriots who 
had not been there for "these twenty years," and who appeared 
in the accoutrements that were in vogue in Queen Anne's time. 
" Then," he writes, " the joy and awkward jollity of them is in- 
expressible ! They titter, and, wherever you meet them, are 
always looking at their watches an hour before the time. I 
met several on the birthday (for I did not arrive time enough 
to make clothes), and they were dressed in all the colors of the 
rainbow. They seem to have said to themselves, twenty years 
ago, 'Well, if ever I do go to court again, I will have a pink 
and silver, or a blue and silver ;' and they keep their resolu- 
tions." 

Another characteristic anecdote betrays his ill-suppressed 
vexation : 

"I laughed at myself prodigiously the other day for a piece 
of absence. I was writing, on the king's birthday, and being 
disturbed with the mob in the street, I rang for the porter, 
and with an air of grandeur, as if I was still at Downing Street, 
cried, 'Pray send away those marrow-bones and cleavers!' 
The poor fellow, with the most mortified air in the world, re- 
plied, ' Sir, they are not at our door, but over the way, at my 
Lord Carteret's.' ' Oh !' said I, ' then let them alone ; may be, 
he does not dislike the noise !' I pity the poor porter, who 
sees all his old customers going over the way too." 

The retirement of Sir Robert from office had an important 



268 THE SPLENDID MANSION OF HOUGHTON. 

effect on the tastes and future life of his son Horace. The min- 
ister had been occupying his later years in pulling down his old 
ancestral house at Houghton, and in building an enormous man- 
sion, which has since his time been, in its turn, partially demol- 
ished. When Harley, Earl of Oxford, was known to be erect- 
ing a great house for himself, Sir Robert had remarked that a 
minister who did so committed a great imprudence. When 
Houghton was begun, Sir Hynde Aston reminded Sir Robert 
of this speech. " You ought -to have recalled it to me before," 
was the reply ; " for before I began building, it might have 
been of use to me." 

This famous memorial ofWalpolean greatness, this splendid 
folly, constructed, it is generally supposed, on public money, 
was inhabited by Sir Robert only ten days in summer, and 
twenty days in winter; in the autumn, during the shooting 
season, two months. It became almost an eyesore to the quiet 
gentry, who viewed the palace with a feeling of their own in- 
feriority. People as good as the Walpoles lived in their ga- 
ble-ended, moderate-sized mansions ; and who was Sir Robert, 
to set them at so immense a distance ? 

To the vulgar comprehension of the Premier, Houghton, gi- 
gantic in its proportions, had its purposes. He there assem- 
bled his supporters ; there, for a short time, he entertained his 
constituents and coadjutors with a magnificent, jovial hospi- 
tality, of which he, with his gay spirits, his humorous, indeli- 
cate jokes, and his unbounded good-nature, was the very soul. 
Free conversation, hard drinking, were the features of every 
day's feast. Pope thus describes him : 

" Seen him, I have, but in his happier hour, 
Of social pleasure, ill exchanged for power ; 
Seen him uncumbered with the venal tribe, 
Smile without art, and win without a bribe." 

Amid the coarse taste one gentle refinement existed : this 
was the love of gardening, both in its smaller compass and in 
its nobler sense of landscape gardening. " This place," Sir 
Robert, in 1743, wrote to General Churchill, from Houghton, 
" affords no news, no subject of entertainment or amusement ; 
for fine men of wit and pleasure about town understand nei- 
ther the language and taste, nor the pleasure of the inanimate 
world. My flatterers here are all mutes : the oaks, the beech- 
es, the chestnuts, seem to contend which best shall please the 
lord of the manor. They can not deceive ; they will not lie. 
I in sincerity admire them, and have as many beauties about 
me as fill up all my hours of dangling, and no disgrace attend- 
ing me, from sixty-seven years of age. Within doors we come 
a little nearer to real life, and admire, upon the almost speak- 



WHAT WE OWE TO THE " GRANDES TOURS." 2t>9 

ing canvas, all the airs and graces the proudest ladies can 
boast." 

In these pursuits Horace cordially shared. Through his 
agency, Horace Mann, still at Florence, selected and purchased 
works of art, which were sent either to Arlington Street, or 
to form the famous Houghton Collection, to which Horace so 
often refers in that delightful work, his " Anecdotes of Paint- 
ing." 

Among the embellishments of Houghton, the gardens were 
the most expensive. 

" Sir Robert has pleased himself," Pulteney, Earl of Bath, 
wrote, " with erecting palaces and extending ]>arks, planting 
gardens in places to which the very earth was to be trans- 
ported in carriages, and embracing cascades and fountains 
whose water was only to be obtained by aqueducts and ma- 
chines, and imitating the extravagance of Oriental monarchs, 
at the expense of a free people whom he has at once impover- 
ished and betrayed." 

The ex-minister went to a great expense in the cultivation 
of plants, bought Uvedale's " Hortus Siccus ;" and received 
from Bradley, the Professor of Botany at Cambridge, the trib- 
ute of a dedication, in which it was said that " Sir Robert had 
purchased one of the finest collections of plants in the king- 
dom." 

What was more to his honor still, was Sir Robert's preser- 
vation of St. James's Park for the people. Fond of out-door 
amusements himself, the Premier heard, with dismay, a pro- 
posal on the part of Queen Caroline, to convert that ancient 
park into a palace garden. " She asked my father," Horace 
Walpole relates, " what the alteration might possibly cost." 
" Only three croic?is" was the civil, Avitty, candid answer. The 
queen was wise enough to take the hint. It is possible she 
meant to convert the park into gardens that should be open to 
the public as at Berlin, Manhehn, and even the Tuileries. Still 
it would not have been ours. 

Horace Walpole owed, perhaps, his love of architecture and 
his taste for gardening, partly to the early companionship of 
Gray, who delighted in those pursuits. Walpole's estimation 
of pictures, medals, and statues, was however the fruit of a 
long residence abroad. We are apt to rail at continental na- 
v_tions ; yet had it not been for the occasional intercourse with 
foreign nations, art would have altogether died out among us. 
To the " Grandes Tours," performed as a matter of course by 
our young nobility in the most impressionable period of their 
lives, we owe most of our noble private collections. Charles I. 
and Buckingham, renewed, in their travels in Spain, the efforts 



270 GKORUE VERTUE. 

previously made by Lord Arundel and Lord Pembroke, to 
embellish their country seats. Then came the rebellion ; and 
like a mighty rushing river, made a chasm in which much per- 
ished. Art languished in the reign of the second Charles, ex- 
cepting in what related to portrait-painting. Evelyn stood al- 
most alone in his then secluded and lovely retirement at Wot- 
ton ; apart in his undying exertions still to arrest the Muses 
ere they quitted forever English shores. Then came the dead- 
ly blank of William's icy influence. The reign of Anne was 
conspicuous more for letters than for art : architecture, more 
especially, was vulgarized under Vanbrugh. George I. had 
no conception of any thing abstract : taste, erudition, science, 
art, were like a dead language to his common sense, his vulgar 
profligacy, and his personal predilections. Neither George II. 
nor his queen had an iota of taste, either in language, conduct, 
literature, or art. To be vulgar was haul ton ; to be refined, 
to have pursuits that took one from low party gossip, or hete- 
rodox disquisitions upon party, was esteemed odd : every thing 
original was cramped; every thing imaginative was sneered 
at ; the enthusiasm that is elevated by religion was unphilo- 
sophic; the poetry that is breathed out from the works of 
genius was not comprehended. 

It was at Houghton, under the roof of that monster palace, 
that Horace Walpole indulged that taste for pictures which he 
had acquired in Italy. His chief coadjutor, however, as far 
as the antiquities of painting are concerned, was George Ver- 
tue, the eminent engraver. Vertue was a man of modest 
merit, and was educated merely as an engraver ; but, con- 
scious of talent, studied drawing, which he afterward applied 
to engraving. He was patronized both by the vain Godfrey 
Kneller, and by the intellectual Lord Somers : his works have 
more fidelity than elegance, and betray in every line the anti- 
quary rather than the genius. Vertue w T as known to be a first- 
rate authority as to the history of a painter ; he was admitted 
and welcomed into every great country house in England ; he 
lived in an atmosphere of vertu; every line a dilettante col- 
lector wrote, every word he uttered, was minuted down by 
him ; he visited every collection of rarities ; he copied every 
paper he could find relative to art ; registers of wills and reg- 
isters of parishes, for births and deaths were his delight ; sales 
his recreation. He was the " Old Mortality" of pictures in this 
country. ~No wonder that his compilations were barely con- 
tained in forty volumes, which he left in manuscript. Human 
nature has singular varieties : here was a man who expended 
his very existence in gathering up the works of others, and 
died without giving to the world one of his own. But Horace 



MEN OF ONE IDEA. 271 

Walpole has done him justice. After Vertue's death he 
bought his manuscripts from his widow. In one of his pock- 
et-books was contained the whole history of this man of one 
idea. Vertue began his collection in 1713, and worked at it 
until his death in 1757, forty-four years. 

He died in the belief that he should one day publish an 
unique work on painting and painters : such was the aim of his 
existence, and his study must have been even more curious 
than the wonderfully crammed small house at Islington, where 
William Upcott, the " Old Mortality" in his line, who saved 
from the housemaid's fire-lighting designs the MSS. of Eve- 
lyn's Life and Letters, which he found tossing about in the old 
gallery at Wotton, near Dorking, passed his days. Like Up- 
cott, like Palissy, Vertue lived and died under the influence of 
one isolated aim, effort, and hope. 

In these men the cherished and amiable monomania of gift- 
ed minds Avas realized. Upcott had every possible autograph 
from every known hand in his collection ; Palissy succeeded 
in making glazed china ; but Vertue left his ore to the hands 
of others to work out into shape, and the man who moulded 
his crude materials was Horace Walpole. His forty volumes 
were shaped into a readable work, as curious and accurate in 
facts as it is flippant and prejudiced in style and opinions. 

Walpole' s " Anecdotes of Painting" are the foundation of 
all our small amount of knowledge as to what England has 
done formerly to encourage art. 

One may fancy the modest, ingenious George Vertue ar- 
ranging first, and then making a catalogue of the Houghton 
Gallery: Horace, a boy still, in looks, with a somewhat chub- 
by face, admiring and following : Sir Robert, in a cocked hat, 
edged with silver lace, a curled short wig, a loose coat, also 
edged with silver lace, and with a half-humorous expression 
on his vulgar countenance, watching them at intervals, as they 
paraded through the hall, a large square space, adorned with 
bas-reliefs and busts, and containing a bronze copy of the Lao- 
coon, for which Sir Robert (or rather we English) paid a 
thousand pounds ; or they might be seen hopping speedily 
through the ground-floor apartments where there could be lit- 
tle to arrest the footsteps of the medieval-minded Vertue. 
Who but a courtier could give one glance to a portrait of 
George L, though by Kneller ? Who that was a courtier in 
that house would pause to look at the resemblance, also by 
Kneller, of the short-lived, ill-used Catherine Shorter, the Prem- 
ier's first wife — even though he still endured it in his bed- 
room? a mute reproach for his neglect and misconduct. So 
let us hasten to the yellow dining-room where presently we 



272 THE NOBLE PICTURE-GALLERY AT HOUGHTON. 

may admire the works of Titian, Guido, Vanderwerfi, and last, 
not least, eleven portraits by Vandyck, of the Wharton fami- 
ly, which Sir Robert bought at the sale of the spendthrift 
I) nke of Wharton. 

Then let us glance at the saloon, famed for the four large 
" Market Pieces," as they were called, by Rubens and Sny- 
ders : let us lounge into what were called the Carlo Maratti 
and the Vandyck rooms ; step we also into the green velvet 
bed-chamber, the tapestry-room, the worked bed-chamber ; then 
comes another dining-room : in short, we are lost in wonder 
at this noble collection, which cost £40,000. 

Many of the pictures were selected and bargained for by 
Vertue, who, in Flanders, purchased the Market Pieces re- 
ferred to, for £428 ; but did not secure the " Fish Market," 
and the " Meat Market," by the same painter. In addition to 
the pictures, the stateliness and beauty of the rooms were en- 
hanced by rich furniture, carving, gilding, and all the subsidiary 
arts which our grandfathers loved to add to high merit in de- 
sign or coloring. Besides his purchases,. Sir Robert received 
presents of pictures from friends, and expectant courtiers ; and 
the gallery at Houghton contained at last 222 pictures. To 
our sorrow now, to our disgrace then, this splendid collection 
was suffered to go out of the country : Catherine, Empress of 
Russia, bought it for £40,000, and it adorns the Hermitage 
Palace of St. Petersburg. 

After Sir Robert's retirement from power, the good qualities 
which he undoubtedly possessed, seemed to reappear when the 
pressure of party feeling was withdrawn. He was fast declin- 
ing in health when the insurrection of 1745 was impending. 
He had warned the country of its danger in his last speech, 
one of the finest ever made in the House of Lords : after that 
effort his voice was heard no more. The gallant, unfortunate 
Charles Edward was then at Paris, and that scope of old ex- 
perience 

"Which doth attain 
To somewhat of prophetic strain," 

showed the ex-minister of Great Britain that an invasion was 
at hand. It was on this occasion that Frederick, Prince of 
Wales, took Sir Robert, then Lord Orford, by the hand, and 
thanked him for his zeal in the cause of the royal family. 
Walpoje returned to Norfolk, but was summoned again to 
London to afford the ministry the benefit of his counsels. 
Death, however, closed his prosperous but laborious life. He 
suffered agonies from the stone ; large doses of opium kept 
him in a state of stupor, and alone gave him ease ; but his 
strength failed, and he was warned to prepare himself for his 



THE GRANVILLE PACTION. 273 

decease. He bore the announcement with great fortitude, and 
took leave of his children in perfect resignation to his doom. 
He died on the 28th of March, 1745. 

Horace Walpole — whatsoever doubts may rest on the fact 
of his being Lord Orford's son or not — writes feelingly and 
naturally upon this event, and its forerunner, the agonies of 
disease. He seems, from the following passages in his letters 
to Sir Horace Mann, to have devoted himself incessantly to 
the patient invalid : on his father having rallied, he thus ex- 
presses himself: 

" You have heard from your brother the reason of my not 
having written to you so long. I have been out but twice 
since my father fell into this illness, which is now near a 
month, and all that time either continually in his room, or 
obliged to see multitudes of people ; for it is wonderful how 
eveiy body of all kinds has affected to express their concern 
for him ! He has been out of danger this week ; but I can't 
say he mended at all perceptibly till these last three days. 
His spirits are amazing, and his constitution more; for Dr. 
Hulse said honestly from the first, that if he recovered it 
would be from his own strength, not from their art. How 
much more," he adds, mournfully, " he will ever recover, one 
scarce dare hope about ; for us, he is greatly recovered ; for 
himself — " He then breaks off. 

A month after we find him thus referring to the parent still 
throbbing in mortal agony on the death-bed, with no chance 
of amendment : 

"How dismal a prospect for him, with the possession of the 
greatest understanding in the Avorld, not the least impaired, 
to lie without any use of it ! for to keep him from pains and 
restlessness, he takes so much opiate that he is scarce awake 
four hours of the four-and-twenty ; but I will say no more of 
this." 

On the 29th of March he again wrote to his friend in the 
following terms : 

" I begged your brothers to tell you what it is impossible 
for me to tell you. You share in our common loss ! Don't 
expect me to enter at all upon the subject. After the melan- 
choly two months that I have passed, and in my situation, 
you will not wonder I shun a conversation which could not be 
bounded by a letter, a letter that would groAv into a panegyric 
or a piece of a moral ; improper for me to write upon, and too 
distressful for us both ! a death is only to be felt, never to be 
talked upon by those it touches." 

Nevertheless, the world soon had Horace Walpole for her 
own again ; during Lord Orford's last illness, George II. 

M 2 



274 A VERY GOOD QUARREL. 

thought of him, it seems, even though the " Granvilles" were 
the only people tolerated at court. That famous clique com- 
prised the secretly adored of Horace (Lady Grenville once), 
Lady Sophia Fermor. 

" The Granville faction," Horace wrote, before his father's 
death, " are still the constant and only countenanced people 
at court. Lord Winchelsea, one of the disgraced, played at 
court at Twelfth-night, and won ; the king asked him next 
morning how much he had for his own share. He replied, 
'Sir, about a quarter's salary.' I liked the spirit, and was 
talking to bim of it the next night at Lord Granville's. ' Why 
yes,' said he, 'I think it showed familiarity at least: tell it your 
father, I don't think he w T ill dislike it.' " 

The most trifling incidents divided the world of fashion and 
produced the bitterest rancor. Indeed, nothing could exceed 
the frivolity of the great, except their impertinence. For want 
of better amusements, it had become the fashion to make co- 
nundrums, and to have printed books full of them, which were 
produced at parties. But these were peaceful diversions. The 
following anecdote is worthy of the times of George II. and of 
Frederick of Wales : 

" There is a very good quarrel," Horace writes, " on foot, 
between two duchesses : she of Queensberry sent to invite 
Lady Emily Lenox to a ball : her grace of Richmond, who is 
wonderfully cautious since Lady Caroline's elopement (with 
Mr. Fox), sent word ' she could not determine.' The other 
sent again the same night: the same answer. The Queens- 
berry then sent word that she had made up her company, and 
desired to be excused from having Lady Emily's ; but at the 
bottom of the card wrote, 'Too great trust.' There is no dec- 
laration of war come out from the other duchess ; but I believe 
it will be made a national quarrel of the whole illegitimate roy- 
al family." 

Meantime, Houghton was shut up: for its owner died 
£50,000 in debt, and the elder brother of Horace, the second 
Lord Orford, proposed, on entering it again, after keeping it 
closed for some time, to enter upon " new, and then very un- 
known economy, for which there was great need :" thus Hor- 
ace refers to the changes. 

It was in the South Sea scheme that Sir Robert Walpole 
had realized a large sum of money, by selling out at the right 
moment. In doing so he had gained 1000 per cent. But he 
left little to his family, and at his death Horace received a leg- 
acy only of £5000, and a thousand pounds yearly, which he was 
to draw (for doing nothing), from the collector's place in the 
Custom House ; the surplus to be divided between his brother 




6TEAWBEKBY HILL FROM THE THAMES. 



TWICKENHAM. — STRAWBERRY HILL. 277 

Edward and himself: this provision was afterward enhanced 
by some money which came to Horace and his brothers from 
his uncle Captain Shorter's property ; but Horace was not at 
this period a rich man, and perhaps his not marrying was ow- 
ing to his dislike of fortune-hunting, or to his dread of refusal. 

Two years after his father's death he took a small house at 
Twickenham: the property cost him nearly £14,000; in the 
deeds he found that it was called Strawberry Hill. He soon 
commenced making considerable additions to the house — which 
became a sort of raree-show in the latter part of the last, and 
until a late period in this, century. 

Twickenham — so called, according to the antiquary Nor- 
den, because the Thames, as it flows near it, seems from the 
islands to be divided into two rivers — had long been celebra- 
ted for its gardens, when Horace Walpole, the generalissimo of 
all bachelors, took Strawberry Hill. "Twicknam is as much 
as Twynam," declares Xorden, "a place scytuate between two 
rivers." So fertile a locality could not be neglected by the 
monks of old, the great gardeners and tillers of land in ancient 
days; and the Manor of Twickenham was consequently given 
to the monks of Christ Church, Canterbury, by King Edred, 
in 491 ; who piously inserted his anathema against any person 
— whatever their rank, sex, or order — who should infringe the 
rights of these holy men. "May their memory," the king de- 
creed, with a force worthy of the excommunicator-wholesale, 
Pius IX., " be blotted out of the Book of Life ; may their 
strength continually w r aste away, and be there no restorative 
to repair it!" Nevertheless, there were in the time of Ly- 
sons, a hundred and fifty acres of fruit-gardens at Twicken- 
ham : the soil being a sandy loam, raspberries grew plentifully. 
Even so early as Queen Elizabeth's days, Bishop Corbet's la- 
ther had a nursery -garden at Twickenham — so that King 
Edred's curse seems to have fallen as powerlessly as it maybe 
hoped all subsequent maledictions may do. 

In 1698, one of the Earl of Bradford's coachmen built a 
small house on a piece of ground, called in old works, Straw- 
berry-Hill-Shot ; lodgings w r ere here let, and Colley Cibber be- 
came one of the occupants of the place, and here wrote his 
Comedy called " Refusal ; or the Ladies' Philosophy." The 
spot was so greatly admired that Talbot, Bishop of Durham, 
lived eight years in it, and the Marquis of Carnarvon suc- 
ceeded him as a tenant : next came Mrs. Chenevix, a famous 
toy-woman. She was probably a French woman, for Father 
Courayer — he who vainly endeavored to effect a union between 
the English and the Gallican churches — lodged here some time. 
Horace Walpole bought up Mrs. Chenevix's lease, and after- 



278 THE RECLUSE OE STRAWBERRY. 

ward the fee-simple ; and henceforth became the busiest, if not 
the happiest, man in a small way in existence. 

We now despise the poor, over-ornate miniature Gothic 
style of Strawberry Hill ; we do not consider Avith what infi- 
nite pains the structure was enlarged into ifs final and well- 
known form. In the first place, Horace made a tour to collect 
models from the chief cathedral cities in England ; but the 
building required twenty-three years to complete it. It was 
begun in 1753, and finished in 1116. Strawberry Hill had one 
merit, every thing was in keeping : the internal decorations, 
the screens, the niches, the chimney-pieces, the book-shelves, 
were all Gothic ; and most of these were designed by Horace 
himself; and, indeed, the description of Strawberry Hill is too 
closely connected with the annals of his life to be dissevered 
from his biography. Here he gathered up his mental forces 
to support and amuse himself during a long life, sometimes 
darkened by spleen, but rarely by solitude ; for Horace, with 
much isolation of the heart, was, to the world, a social being. 

What scandal, what trifles, what important events, what lit- 
tleness of mind, yet what stretch of intellect were henceforth 
issued by the recluse of Strawberry, as he plumed himself on 
being styled, from that library of " Strawberry !" Let us pic- 
ture to ourselves the place, the persons — put on, if we can, the 
sentiments and habits of the retreat ; look through its loop- 
holes, not only on the wide world beyond, but into the small 
world within ; and face the fine gentleman author in every pe- 
riod of his varied life. 

" The Strawberry Gazette," Hoi'ace once wrote to a fine and 
titled lady, " is very barren of weeds." Such, however, was 
rarely the case. Peers, and still better, peeresses — politicians, 
actors, actresses — the poor poet who knew not where to dine, 
the Maecenas who was " fed with dedications" — the belle of 
the season, the demirep of many, the antiquary, and the dilet- 
tanti — painters, sculptors, engravers, all brought news to the 
" Strawberry Gazette ;" and incense, sometimes wrung from 
aching hearts, to the fastidious wit who professed to be a 
judge of all material and immaterial things — from a burlesque 
to an Essay on History or Philosophy — from the construction 
of Mrs. Chenevix's last new toy to the mechanism of a clock 
made in the sixteenth century, was lavished there. 

It is noonday : Horace is showing a party of guests from 
London over Strawberry : enter we with him, and let us stand 
in the great parlor before a portrait by Wright of the Minister 
to whom all courts bowed. " That is my father, Sir Robert, 
in profile," and a vulgar face in profile is always seen at its 
vulgarest ; and the nez-retrousse, the coarse mouth, the double 



PORTRAITS OF THE DIGBY FAMILY. 279 

chin, are most forcibly exhibited in this limning by Wright ; 
who did not, like Reynolds, or like Lawrence, cast a nuance 
of gentility over every subject of his pencil. Horace — can we 
not hear him in imagination ? — is telling his friends how Sir 
Robert used to celebrate the day on which he sent in his res- 
ignation, as a fete ; then he would point out to his visitors a 
Conversation-piece, one of Reynolds's earliest efforts in small 
life, representing the second Earl of Edgecumbe, Selwyn, and 
Williams — all wits and beaux, and habitues of Strawberry. 
Colley Cibber, however, was put in cold marble in the ante- 
room ; respect very Horatian, for no man knew better how to 
rank his friends than the recluse of Strawberry. He hurries 
the lingering guests through the little parlor, the chimney- 
piece of which was copied from the tomb of Ruthall, Bishop 
of Durham, in Westminster Abbey. Yet how he pauses com- 
placently to enumerate what has been done for him by titled 
belles : how these dogs, modeled in terra-cotta, are the produc- 
tion of Anne Darner ; a water-color drawing by Agnes Berry ; 
a landscape with gipsies by Lady Di Beauclerk ; all platonic- 
ally devoted to our Horace ; but he dwells long, and his bright 
eyes are lighted up as he pauses before a case, looking as if it 
contained only a few apparently faded, of no-one-knows-who 
(or by w T hom) miniatures ; this is a collection of Peter Oliver's 
best works — portraits of the Digby family. 

How sadly, in referring to these invaluable pictures, does 
one's mind revert to the day when, before the hammer of 
Robins had resounded in these rooms — before his transcendent 
eloquence had been heard at Strawberry — Agnes Strickland, 
followed by all eyes, pondered over that group of portraits : 
how, as she slowly withdrew, w r e of the commonalty scarce 
worthy to look, gathered around the spot again, and wondered 
at the perfect life, the perfect coloring, proportion, and keep-' 
ing of those tiny vestiges of a by-gone generation ! 

Then Horace — we fear it was not till his prime was past, 
and a touch of gout crippled his once active limbs — points to a 
picture of Rose, the gai'dener (well named), presenting Charles 
II. with a pine-apple. Some may murmur a doubt whether 
pine-apples were cultivated in cold Britain so long since. But 
Horace enforces the fact; "the likeness of the king," quoth 
he, " is too marked, and his features are too well known to 
doubt the fact ;" and then he tells " how he had received a 
present the last Sunday of fruit — and from whom." 

They pause next on Sir Peter Lely's portrait of Cowley — 
next on Hogarth's Sarah Malcolm, the murderess of her mis- 
tress ; then — and doubtless, the spinster ladies are in fault here 
for the delay — on Mrs. Darner's model of two kittens, pets, 



280 MRS. damer's models. 

though, of Horace Walpole's — for he who loved few human 
beings was, after the fashion of bachelors, fond of cats. 

They ascend the staircase : the domestic adornments merge 
into the historic. We have Francis I. — not himself, but his 
armor ; the chimney-piece, too, is a copy from the tomb-works 
of John, Earl of Cornwall, in Westminster Abbey; the stone- 
work from that of Thomas, Duke of Clarence, at Canterbury. 

Stay a while : we have not done with sacrilege yet ; worse 
things are to be told, and Ave walk with consciences not un- 
scathed into the Library, disapproving in secret but flattering 
vocally. Here the very spirit of Horace seemed to those who 
visited Strawberry before its fall to breathe in every corner. 
Alas ! when we beheld that library, it was half filled with 
chests containing the MSS. of his letters ; which were bought 
by that enterprising publisher of learned name, Richard Bent- 
ley, and which have since had adequate justice done them by 
first-rate editors. There they were : the " Strawberry Gazette" 
in full ; one glanced merely at the yellow paper, and clear, de- 
cisive hand, and then turned to see what objects he, who loved 
his books so well, collected for his especial gratification. Mrs. 
Darner again ! how proud he was of her genius — her beauty, 
her cousinly love for himself; the wise way in which she bound 
up the wounds of her breaking heart when her profligate hus- 
band shot himself, by taking to occupation — perhaps, too, by 
liking cousin Horace indifferently well. He put her models 
forward in every place. Here was her Osprey Eagle in terra- 
cotta, a masterly production ; there a couvre-fire, or ciir-feu\ 
imitated and modeled by her. Then the marriage of Henry 
VI. figures on the wall : near the fire is a screen of the first 
tapestry ever made in England, representing a map of Surrey 
and Middlesex ; a notion of utility combined with ornament, 
which we see still exhibited in the Sampler in old-fashioned, 
middle-class houses ; that poor posthumous, base-born child 
of the tapestry, almost defunct itself; and a veritable piece of 
antiquity. 

Still more remarkable in this room was a quaint-faced clock, 
silver gilt, given by Henry VIII. to Anne Boleyn ; which per- 
chance, after marking the moments of her festive life, struck 
unfeelingly the hour of her doom. 

But the company are hurrying into a little ante-room, the 
ceiling of which is studded with stars in mosaic ; it is there- 
fore called jocularly, the " Star Chamber ;" and here stands a 
cast of the famous bust of Henry VH., by Torregiano, intend- 
ed for the tomb of that sad-faced, long-visaged monarch, who 
always looks as if royalty had disagreed with him. 

Next we enter the Holbein Chamber. Horace hated bish- 



THE LONG GALLERY AT STRAWBERRY. L'Sl 

ops and archbishops, and all the hierarchy ; yet here again we 
behold another prelatical chimney-piece — a frieze taken from 
the tomb of Archbishop Warham, at Canterbury. And here, 
in addition to Holbein's picture of Mary Tudor, Duchess of 
Suffolk, and of her third husband, Adrian Stokes, are Vertue's 
copies of Holbein, drawings of that great master's pictures in 
Buckingham House : enough — let us hasten into the Long Gal- 
lery. Those who remember Sir Samuel Merrick and his gal- 
lery at Goodrich Court will have traced in his curious, some- 
what gewgaw collections of armor, antiquities, faded portraits, 
and mock horses, much of the taste and turn of mind that ex- 
isted in Horace Walpole. 

The gallery, which all who recollect the sale at Strawberry 
Hill must remember with peculiar interest, sounded well on 
paper. It was 56 feet long, 17 high, and 13 wide; yet was 
neither long enough, high enough, nor wide enough to inspire 
the indefinable sentiment by which we acknowledge vastness. 
We beheld it the scene of George Robins's triumphs — crowd- 
ed to excess. Here strolled Lord John Russell ; there, with 
heavy tread, walked Daniel O'Connell. Hallam, placid, kind- 
ly, gentle — the prince of book-worms — moved quickly through 
the rooms, pausing to raise a glance to the ceiling — copied 
from one of the side aisles of Henry VII.'s Chapel — but the 
fretwork is gilt, and there is a,2)etitesse about the Gothic which 
disappoints all good judges. 

But when Horace conducted his courtly guests into this his 
mind-vaunted vaulted gallery, he had sometimes George Sel- 
Avyn at his side ; or Gray — in his gracious moods ;' or, in his 
old age, "my niece, the Duchess of Gloucester," leaned on his 
arm. What strange associations, what brilliant company ! — 
the associations can never be recalled there again ; nor the 
company reassembled. The gallery, like every thing else, has 
perished under the pressure of debt. He who was so par- 
ticular, too, as to the number of those who were admitted to 
see his house — he who stipulated that four persons only should 
compose a party, and one party alone be shown over each day 
— how would he have borne the crisis, could he have foreseen 
it, when Robins became, for the time, his successor, and was 
the temporary lord of Strawberry ; the dusty, ruthless, won- 
dering, depreciating mob of brokers — the respectable host of 
publishers — the starving army of martyrs, the authors — the 
fine ladies, who saw nothing there comparable to Howell and 
James's — the antiquaries, fishing out suspicious antiquities — 
the painters, clamorous over Kneller's profile of Mrs. Barry — 
the virtuous indignant mothers, as they passed by the por- 
traits of the Duchess de la Valliere, and of Ninon de l'Enclos, 



282 THE CHAPEL. 

and remarked, or at all events they might have remarked, that 
the company on the floor was scarcely much more respectable 
than the company on the walls — the fashionables, who herded 
together, impelled by caste, that free-masonry of social life, en- 
ter the Beauclerk closet to look over Lady Di's scenes from 
the " Mysterious Mother" — the players and dramatists, finally, 
who crowded round Hogarth's sketch of his " Beggars' Opera," 
with portraits, and gazed on Davison's likeness of Mrs. Clive: 
how could poor Horace have tolerated the sound of their Ir- 
reverent remarks, the dust of their shoes, the degradation of 
their fancying that they might doubt his spurious-looking 
antiquities, or condemn his improper-looking ladies on their 
canvas ? How, indeed, could he ? For those parlors, that 
library, were peopled in his days with all those who could en- 
hance his pleasures, or add to their own, by their presence. 
When Poverty stole in there, it was irradiated by Genius. 
When painters hovered beneath the fretted ceiling of that 
library, it was to thank the oracle of the day, not always for 
large orders, but for powerful recommendations. When act- 
resses trod the Star Chamber, it was as modest friends, not as 
audacious critics on Horace, his house, and his pictures. 

Before we call up the spirits that were familiar at Straw- 
berry — ere we pass through the garden-gate, the piers of 
which were copied from the tomb of Bishop William de Luda, 
in Ely Cathedral — let us glance at the chapel, and then a word 
or two about Walpole's neighbors and anent Twickenham. 

The front of the chapel was copied from Bishop Audley's 
tomb at Salisbury. Four panels of wood, taken from the Ab- 
bey of St. Edmund's Bury, displayed the portraits of Cardinal 
Beaufort, of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and of Archbish- 
op Kemp. So much for the English church. 

Next was seen a magnificent shrine in mosaic, from the 
church of St. Mary Maggiore, in Rome. This was the work of 
the noted Peter Cavalini, who constructed the tomb of Ed- 
ward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey. The shrine had 
figured over the sepulchre of four martyrs, who rested be- 
neath it in 1257 ; then the principal window in the chapel was 
brought from Bexhill in Surrey; and displayed portraits of 
Henry III. and his queen. 

It was not every day that gay visitors traveled down the 
dusty roads from London to visit the recluse at Strawberry ; 
but Horace wanted them not, for he had neighbors. In his^ 
youth he had owned for his playfellow the ever witty, the 
precocious, the all-fascinating Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. 
" She was," he wrote, " a playfellow of mine when we were 
children. She was always a dirty little thing. This habit 



THE SOCIETY AROUND STRAWBERRY HILL. 2H3 

continued with her. When at Florence, the Grand Duke 
gave her apartments in his palace. One room sufficed for 
every thing; and when she went away, the stench was so 
strong that they were obliged to fumigate the chamber with 
vinegar for a week." 

Let not the scandal be implicitly credited. Lady Mary, 
dirty or clean, resided occasionally, however, at Twickenham. 
When the admirable Lysons composed his " Environs of Lon- 
don," Horace Walpole was still living — it was in 17 95 — to 
point out to him the house in which his brilliant acquaintance 
lived. It was then inhabited by Dr. Morton. The profligate 
and clever Duke of Wharton lived also at Twickenham. 

Marble Hill was built by George II., for the Countess of 
Suffolk, and Henry, Earl of Pembroke, was the architect. Of 
later years, the beautiful and injured Mrs. Fitzherbert might be 
seen traversing the greensward, which was laved by the then 
pellucid waters of the Thames. The parish of Twickenham, 
in fact, was noted for the numerous characters who have, at 
various times, lived in it ; Robert Boyle, the great philoso- 
pher ; James Craggs, Secretary of State ; Lord George Ger- 
maine ; Lord Bute — are strangely mixed up with the old mem- 
ories which circle around Twickenham. 

One dark figure in the background of society haunts us 
also : Lady Macclesfield, the cruel mother of Savage, polluted 
Twickenham by her evil presence. 

Let us not dwell on her name, but recall, with somewhat 
of pride, that the names of that knot of accomplished, intel- 
lectual women, who composed the neighborhood of Straw- 
berry, were all English ; those who loved to revel in all its 
charms of society and intellect were our justly- j)rized country- 
women. 

Foremost in the bright constellation was Anne Seymour 
Conway, too soon married to the Hon. John Damer. She 
was one of the loveliest, the most enterprising, and the most 
gifted women of her time — thirty-one years younger than 
Horace, having been born in 1748. Pie doubtless liked her 
the more that no ridicule could attach to his partiality, which 
was that of a father to a daughter, in so far as regarded his 
young cousin. She belonged to a family dear to him, being 
the daughter of Field Marshal Henry Seymour Conway : then 
she was beautiful, witty, a courageous politician, a heroine, 
fearless of losing caste by aspiring to be an artist. She was, 
in truth, of our own time rather than of that. The works 
which she left at Strawberry are scattered ; and if still trace- 
able, are probably in many instances scarcely valued. But in 
that lovely spot, hallowed by the remembrance of Mrs. Sid- 



284 ANNE SEYMOUR CONWAY. 

dons, who lived there in some humble capacity — say maid, 
say companion — in Guy's Cliff House, near Warwick — noble 
traces of Anne Darner's genius are extant : busts of the ma- 
jestic Sally Siddons ; of Nature's aristocrat, John Kemble ; 
of his brother Charles — arrest many a look, call up many a 
thought of Anne Damer and her gifts : her intelligence, her 
warmth of heart, her beauty, her associates. Of her powers 
Horace Walpole had the highest opinion. " If they come to 
Florence," he wrote, speaking of Mrs. Darner's going to Italy 
for the winter, " the great duke should beg Mrs. Damer to 
give him something of her statuary ; and it would be a great- 
er curiosity than any thing in his Chamber of Painters. She 
has executed several marvels since you saw her ; and has late- 
ly carved two colossal heads for the bridge at Henley, which 
is the most beautiful in the world, next to the Ponte di Tri- 
nila, and was principally designed by her father, General Con- 
way." 

No wonder that he left to this accomplished relative the 
privilege of living, after his death, at Strawberry Hill, of 
which she took possession in 1797, and where she remained 
twenty years; giving it up, in 1828, to Lord Waldegrave. 

She was, as Ave have said, before her time in her apprecia- 
tion of what was noble and superior, in preference to that 
which gives to caste alone its supremacy. During her last 
years she bravely espoused an unfashionable cause ; and dis- 
regarding the contempt of the lofty, became the champion of 
the injured and unhappy Caroline of Brunswick. 

From his retreat at Strawberry, Horace Walpole heard all 
that befell the object of his flame, Lady Sophia Fermor. His 
letters present from time to time such passages as these ; Lady 
Pomfret, whom he detested, being always the object of his sat- 
ire: 

'.' There is not the least news ; but that my Lord Carteret's 
wedding has been deferred on Lady Sophia's (Ferrnor's) fill- 
ing dangerously ill of a scarlet fever ; but they say it is to be 
next Saturday. She is to have £1600 a year jointure, £400 
pin-money, and £2000 of jewels. Carteret says he does not 
intend to marry the mother (Lady Pomfret) and the wdiole 
family. What do you think my Lady intends?" 

Lord Carteret, who was the object of Lady Pomfret's suc- 
cessful generalship, was at this period, 1744, fifty-four years of 
age, having been born in 1690. He was the son of George, 
Lord Carteret, by Grace, daughter of the first Earl of Bath, 
of the line of Granville — a title which became eventually his. 
The fair Sophia, in marrying him, espoused a man of no ordi- 
nai-y attributes. In person, Horace Walpole, after the grave 



• A MAN WHO NEVER DOUBTED. 285 

had closed over one whom he probably envied, thus describes 
him: 

"Commanding beauty, smoothed by cheerful grace, 
Sat on each open feature of his face. 
Bold was his language, rapid, glowing, strong, 
And science flowed spontaneous from his tongue : 
A genius seizing systems, slighting rules, 
And void of gall, with boundless scorn of fools.'' 

After having been Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Carteret at- 
tended his royal master in the campaign, during which the 
battle of Dettingen was fought. He now held the reins of 
government in his own hands as premier. Lord Chesterfield 
has described him as possessing quick precision, nice decision, 
and unbounded presumption. The Duke of Newcastle used 
to say of him that he was a " man who never doubted." 

In a subsequent letter we find the sacrifice of the young and 
lovely Sophia completed. Ambition was the characteristic of 
her family: and she went, not unwillingly, to the altar. The 
whole affair is too amusingly told to be given in other language 
than that of Horace : 

" I could tell you a great deal of news," he writes to Hor- 
ace Mann, " but it would not be what you would expect. It 
is not of battles, sieges, and declarations of war; nor of inva- 
sions, insurrections, and addresses : it is the god of love, not 
he of war, who reigns in the newspapers. The town haamade 
up a list of six-and-thirty weddings, which I shall not catalogue 
to you. But the chief entertainment has been the nuptials of 
our great Quixote (Carteret) and the fair Sophia. On the point 
of matrimony, she fell ill of a scarlet fever, and was given over, 
while he had the gout, but heroically sent her word, that if she 
was well, he xcould be well. They corresponded every day, and 
he used to plague the cabinet council with reading her letters 
to them. Last night they were married ; and as all he does 
must have a particular air in it, they supped at Lord Pomfret's. 
At twelve, Lady Granville (his mother) and all his family went 
to bed, but the porter : then my lord went home, and waited 
for her in the lodge. She came alone, in a hackney-chair, met 
him in the hall, and was led up the back stairs to bed. What 
is ridiculously lucky is, that Lord Lincoln goes into waiting to- 
day, and will be to present her !" 

The event was succeeded by a great ball at the Duchess of 
Richmond's, in honor of the bride, Lady Carteret paying her 
ladyship the "highest honors," which she received in the 
"highest state." "I have seen her," adds Horace, "but once, 
and found her just what I expected, tres grande dame, full of 
herself, and yet not with an air of happiness. She looks ill, 



286 HORACE IN FAVOK. 

and is grown lean, but is still the finest figure in the world. 
The mother (Lady Pomfret) is not so exalted as I expected ; 
I fancy Carteret has kept his resolution, and does not marry 
her too." 

While this game was being played out, one of Walpole's 
most valued neighbors, Pope, was dying of dropsy, and every 
evening a gentle delirium possessed him. Again does Horace 
return to the theme, ever in his thoughts — the Carterets: again 
does he recount their triumphs and their follies. 

"I will not fail" — still to Horace Mann — "to make your 
compliments to the Pomfrets and Carterets. I see them sel- 
dom, but I am in favor ; so I conclude, for my Lady Pomfret 
told me the other night that I said better things than any 
body. I was Avith them all at a subscription-ball at Ranelagh 
last week, which my Lady Carteret thought proper to look 
upon as given to her, and thanked the gentlemen, who were 
not quite so well pleased at her condescending to take it to 
herself. I did the honors of all her dress. ' How charming 
your ladyship's cross is! I am sure the design was your own!' 
* No, indeed ; my lord sent it to me just as it is.' Then as 
much to the mother. Do you wonder I say better things than 
any body ?" 

But these brilliant scenes were soon mournfully ended. 
Lady Sophia, the haughty, the idolized, the Juno of that gay 
circle, was suddenly carried off by a fever. With real feeling 
Horace thus tells the tale : 

" Before I talk of any public news, I must tell you what you 
will be very sorry for. Lady Granville (Lady Sophia Fermor) 
is dead. She had a fever for six weeks before her lying-in, 
and could never get it off. Last Saturday they called in an- 
other physician, Dr. Oliver. On Monday he pronounced her 
out of danger ; about seven in the evening, as Lady Pomfret 
and Lady Charlotte (Fermor) were sitting by her, the first 
notice they had of her immediate danger was her sighing and 
saying, ' I feel death come very fast upon me !' She repeated 
the same words frequently, remained perfectly in her senses 
and calm, and died about eleven at night. It is very shock- 
ing for any body so young, so handsome, so arrived at the 
height of happiness, to be so quickly snatched away." 

So vanished one of the brightest stars of the court. The 
same autumn (1745) was the epoch of a great event; the 
marching of Charles Edward into England. While the Duke 
of Cumberland was preparing to head the troops to oppose 
him, the Prince of Wales was inviting a party to supper, the 
main feature of which was the citadel of Carlisle in sugar, the 
company all besieging it with sugar-plums. It would, indeed, 



ANECDOTE OF SIR WILLIAM STANHOPE. 287 

as Walpole declared, be impossible to relate all the Caligic- 
llsms of this effeminate, absurd prince. But buffoonery and 
eccentricity were the order of the day. " A ridiculous thing 
happened," Horace writes, " when the princess saw company 
after her confinement. The new-born babe was shown in a 
mighty pretty cradle, designed by Kent, under a canopy in the 
great drawing-room. Sir William Stanhope went to look at 
it. Mrs. Herbert, the governess, advanced to unmantle it. He 
said, ' In wax, I suppose V ' Sir ?' ' In wax, madam ?' ' The 
young prince, sir ?' ' Yes, in wax, I suppose ?' This is his odd 
humor. When he went to see the duke at his birth, he said, 
' Lord, it sees !' " 

The recluse of Strawberry was soon consoled by hearing 
that the rebels were driven back from Derby, where they had 
penetrated, and where the remembrance of the then gay, san- 
guine, brave young Chevalier long lingered among the old in- 
habitants. One of the last traces of his short-lived possession 
of the town is gone : very recently, Exeter House, where he 
lodged and where he received his adherents, has been pulled 
down ; the ground on which it stood, with its court and gar- 
den — somewhat in appeai'ance like an old French hotel — being 
too valuable for the relic of by-gone times to be spared. The 
paneled chambers, the fine staircase, certain pictures — one by 
Wright of Derby, of him — one of Miss Walkinshaw — have all 
disappeared. 

Of the capture, the trial, the death of his adherents, Horace 
Walpole has left the most graphic and therefore touching ac- 
count that has been given ; while he calls a " rebellion on the 
defensive" a " despicable affair." Humane, he reverted with 
horror to the atrocities of General Hawley, " the Chief Jus- 
tice," as he was designated, who had a " passion for frequent 
and sudden executions." When this savage commander gain- 
ed intelligence of a French spy coming over, he displayed him 
at once before the army on a gallows, dangling in his muff 
and boots. When one of the surgeons begged for the body 
of a deserter to dissect, " Well," said the wretch, " but you 
must let me have the skeleton to hang up in the guard-room." 
Such was the temper of the times ; vice, childishness, levity at 
court, brutality in the camp, were the order of the day. Hor- 
ace, even Horace, worldly in all, indifferent as to good and 
bad, seems to have been heart-sick. His brother's matrimo- 
nial infidelity vexed him also sorely. Lady Orford, " tired," 
as he expresses it, of " sublunary affairs," was trying to come 
to an arrangement with her husband, from whom she had been 
long separated ; the price was to be, he fancied, £2000 a year. 
Meantime, during the convulsive state of political affairs, he in- 



288 WALP0LE S HABITS. 

terested himself continually in the improvement of Strawberry 
Hill. There was a rival building, Mr. Bateman's Monastery, 
at Old Windsor, which is said to have had more uniformity 
of design than Strawberry Hill. Horace used indeed to call 
the house of which he became so proud a paper house; the 
walls were at first so slight, and the roof so insecure in heavy 
rains. Nevertheless, his days were passed as peacefully there 
as the premature infirmities which came upon him would 
permit. 

From the age of twenty-five his'fingers were enlarged and 
deformed by chalk-stones, which were discharged twice a year. 
" I can chalk up a score with more rapidity than any man in 
England," was his melancholy jest. He had now adopted as a 
necessity a strict temperance : he sat up very late, either writ- 
ing or conversing, yet always breakfasted at nine o'clock. 
After the death of Madame du Deifand, a little fat dog, scarce- 
ly able to move for age and size — her legacy — used to proclaim 
his approach by barking. The little favorite was placed beside 
him on a sofa ; a tea-kettle, stand, and heater were brought in, 
and he drank two or three cups of tea out of the finest and 
most precious china of Japan — that of a pure white. He 
breakfasted with an appetite, feeding from his table the little 
dog and his pet squirrels. 

Dinner at Strawberry Hill was usually served up in the 
small parlor in winter, the large dining-room being reserved 
for large parties. As age drew on, he was supported down 
stairs by his valet ; and then, says the compiler of WaJpoliana, 
"he ate most moderately of chicken, pheasant, or any light 
food. Pastry he disliked, as difficult of digestion, though he 
would taste a morsel of venison-pie. Never but once, that he 
drank two glasses of white w r ine, did the editor see him taste 
any liquor, except ice-water. A pail of ice was placed under 
the table, in which stood a decanter of water, from which he 
supplied himself with his favorite beverage." 

No wine was drunk after dinner, when the host of Straw- 
berry Hill called instantly to some one to ring the bell for cof- 
fee. It was served up stairs, and there, adds the same writer, 
" he would pass about five o'clock, and generally resuming his 
place on the sofa, would sit till two in the morning, in miscel- 
laneous chit-chat, full of singular anecdotes, strokes of wit, and 
acute observations, occasionally sending for books, or curiosi- 
ties, or passing to the library, as any reference happened to 
arise in conversation. After his coffee, he tasted nothing ; but 
the snuff-box of tabac cVetrennes, from Fribourg's, was not for- 
gotten, and was replenished from a canister lodged in an an- 
cient marble urn of great thickness, which stood in the window 
seat, and served to secure its moisture and rich flavor." 



WHY DID HE NOT MAURY? 280 

In spite of all his infirmities, Horace Walpole took no care 
of his health, as far as out-door exercise was concerned. His 
friends beheld him with horror go out on a dewy day: he 
would even step out in his slippers. In his own grounds lie 
never wore a hat : he used to say, that on his first visit to Paris 
he was ashamed of his effeminacy, when he saw every meagre 
little Frenchman whom he could have knocked down in a 
breath walking without a hat, which he could not do without 
a certainty of taking the disease which the Germans say is en- 
demical in England, and which they call to catch cold. The 
first trial, he used to tell his friends, cost him a fever, but he 
got over it. Draughts of air, damp rooms, windows open at 
his back, became matters of indifference to him after once get- 
ting through the hardening process. He used even to be vex- 
ed at the officious solicitude of friends on this point, and with 
a half smile would say, "My back is the same as my face, and 
my neck is like my nose." He regarded his favorite iced-wa- 
ter as a preservative to his stomach, which, he said, would last 
longer than his bones. He did not take into account that the 
stomach is usually the seat of disease. 

One naturally inquires why the amiable recluse never, in his 
best days, thought of marriage : it is in many instances a dif- 
ficult question to be answered. In men of that period, a dis- 
solute life, an unhappy connection, too frequently explained 
the problem. In the case before us, no such explanation can 
be offered. Horace "Walpole had many votaries, many friends, 
several favorites, but no known mistress. The marks of the 
old bachelor fastened early on him, more especially after he 
began to be governed by his valet de chambre. The notable 
personage who ruled over the pliant Horace was a Swiss, 
named Colomb. This domestic tyrant was despotic ; if Hor- 
ace wanted a tree to be felled, Colomb opposed it, and the 
master yielded. Servants, in those days, were intrinsically 
the same as in ours, but they differed in manner. The old fa- 
miliarity had not gone out, but existed as it still does among 
the French. Those who recollect Dr. Parr will remember 
how stern a rule his factotum Sam exercised over him. Sam 
put down wdiat wine he chose, nay, almost invited the guests ; 
at all events, he had his favorites among them. And in the 
same way as Sam ruled at Hatton, Colomb was, de facto, the 
master of Strawberry Hill. 

With all its defects, the little " plaything house," as Horace 
Walpole called it, must have been a charming house to visit 
in. First, there was the host. "His engaging manners," 
writes the editor of Walpoliana, " and gentle, endearing affa- 
bility to his friends, exceed all praise. Not the smallest hau 

N 



290 " DOWAGERS AS PLENTY AS FLOUNDERS." 

teur, or consciousness of rank or talent, appeared in his famil- 
iar conferences ; and he was ever eager to dissipate any con- 
straint that might occur, as imposing a constraint upon him- 
self, and knowing that any such chain enfeebles and almost an- 
nihilates the mental powers. Endued Avith exquisite sensibil- 
ity, his wit never gave the smallest wound, even to the gross- 
est ignorance of the world, or the most morbid hypochondriac 
bashfulness." 

He had, in fact, no excuse for being doleful or morbid. 
How many recourses were his ! what an even destiny ! what 
prosperous fortunes ! what learned luxury we revel in ! he was 
enabled to " pick up all the roses of science, and to leave the 
thorns behind." To how few of the gifted have the means of 
gratification been permitted! to how many has hard work 
been allotted ! Then, when genius has been endowed with 
rank, with wealth, how often it has been degraded by excess ! 
Rochester's passions ran riot in one century ; Beckford's gifts 
were polluted by his vices in another — signal landmarks of 
each age. But Horace Walpole was prudent, decorous, even 
respectable : no elevated aspirations, no benevolent views en- 
nobled under the petitesse of his nature. He had neither gen- 
ius nor romance : he was even devoid of sentiment ; but he 
was social to all, neighborly to many, and attached to some of 
his fellow-creatures. 

The "prettiest bawble" possible, as he called Strawberry 
Hill, " set in enameled meadows in filigree hedges," was sur- 
rounded by "dowagers as plenty as flounders;" such was 
Walpole's assertion. As he sat in his library, scented by 
caraway, heliotropes, or pots of tuberose, or orange-trees in 
flower; certain dames would look in upon him, sometimes 
malgre ltd ; sometimes to his bachelor heart's content. 

"Thank God !" he wrote to his cousin Conway, " the Thames 
is between me and the Duchess of Queensberry !" Walpole's 
dislike to his fair neighbor may have originated in the circum- 
stance of her birth, and her grace's presuming to plume her- 
self on what he deemed an unimportant distinction. Catherine 
Hyde, Duchess of Queensberry, was the great-granddaughter 
of the famous Lord Clarendon, and the great-niece of Anne, 
Duchess of York. Prior had in heryouth celebrated her in the 
" Female Phaeton," as " Kitty ;" in his verse he begs Phaeton 
to give Kitty the chariot, if but for a day. 

In reference to this, Horace Walpole, in the days of his ad- 
miration of her grace, had made the following impromptu : 

" On seeing the Duchess of Queensberry walk at the funeral 
of the Princess Dowager of Wales — 



CATHERINE HYDE, DUCHESS OF QUEENSBEERY. 291 

"To many a Kitty, Love his car 
Would for a day engage ; 
But Prior's Kitty, ever fair, 
Obtained it for an age." 

It was Kitty who took Gay under her patronage, who re- 
sented the prohibition of the " Beggar's Opera," remonstrated 
with the king and queen, and was thereupon forbidden the 
court. She took the poet to her house. She may have been 
ridiculous, but she had a warm, generous heart. " I am now," 
Gay wrote to Swift in 1729, "in the Duke of Queensberry's 
house, and have been so ever since I left Hampstead ; where 
I was carried at a time that it was thought I could not live a 
day. I must acquaint you (because I know it will please you) 
that during my sickness I had many of the kindest proofs of 
friendship, particularly from the Duke and Duchess of Queens- 
berry; who, if I had been their nearest relation and dearest 
friend, could not have treated me with more constant attend- 
ance then, and they continue the same to me now." 

The duchess appears to have been one of those willful, ec- 
centric, spoiled children, whom the world at once worships 
and ridicules: next to the Countess of Poinfret, she was Hor- 
ace Walpole's'pet- aversion. She was well described as being 
" very clever, very whimsical, and just not mad." Some of 
"Walpoles touches are strongly confirmatory of this description. 
For instance, her grace gives a ball, orders every one to come 
at six, to sup at twelve, and go away directly after: opens the 
ball herself with a minuet. To this ball she sends strange in- 
vitations ; " yet," says Horace, " except these flights, the only 
extraordinary thing the duchess did was to do nothing extra- 
ordinary, for I do not call it very mad that some pique hap- 
pening between her and the Duchess of Bedford, the latter 
had this distich sent to her : 

" ' Come with a whistle — come with a call ; 
Come with good-will, or come not at all.' 

I do not know whether what I am going to tell you did not 
border a little upon Moorfields. The gallery where they 
danced was very cold. Lord Lorn, George Selwyn, and I, 
retired into a little room, and sat comfortably by the fire. The 
duchess looked in, said nothing, and sent a smith to take the 
hinges of the door off. "We understood the hint — left the 
room — and so did the smith the door." 

" I must tell you," he adds in another letter, " of an admira- 
ble reply of your acquaintance, the Duchess of Queensberry : 
old Lady Granville, Lord Carteret's mother, whom they call 
the queen-mother, from taking upon her to do the honors of her 
son's power, was pressing the duchess to ask her for some 



292 KITTY CLIVE. 

place for herself or friends, and assured her that she would 
procure it, be it what it would. Could she have picked out a 
litter person to be gracious to ? The duchess made her a most 
grave courtesy, and said, ' Indeed, there was one thing she had 
set her heart on.' ' Dear child, how you oblige me by asking 
any thing ! What is it ? tell me.' ' Only that you would speak 
to my Lord Carteret to get me made lady of the bed-chamber 
to the Queen of Hungary.' " 

The duchess was, therefore, one of the dowagers, "thick as 
flounders," whose proximity was irritating to the fastidious 
bachelor. There was, however, another Kitty between whom 
and Horace a tender friendship subsisted : this was Kitty 
Clive, the famous actress ; formerly Kitty Ruftar. Horace 
had given her a house on his estate, which he called some- 
times "Little Strawberry Hill," and sometimes "Cliveden;" 
and here Mrs. Clive lived with her brother, Mr. Ruftar, until 
1785. She formed, for her friend, a sort of outer-home, in 
which he passed his evenings. Long had he admired her tal- 
ents. Those were the days of the drama in all its glory ; the 
opera was unfashionable. There were, Horace writes in 1 742, 
on the 26th of May, only two-and-forty people in the Opera 
House, in the pit and boxes : people were running to see 
"Miss Lucy in Town," at Drury Lane, and to admire Mrs. 
Clive, in her imitation of the Muscovites ; but the greatest 
crowds assembled to wonder at Garrick, in " Wine Merchant 
turned Player;" and great and small alike rushed to Good- 
man's Fields to see him act all parts, and to laugh at his ad- 
mirable mimicry. It was, perhaps, somewhat in jealousy of 
the counter attractions, that Horace declared he saw nothing 
wonderful in the acting of Garrick, tnough it was then heresy 
to say so. " Now I talk of players," he adds in the same let- 
ter ; " tell Mr. Chute that his friend Bracegirdle breakfasted 
with me this morning." Horace delighted in such intimacies, 
and in recalling old times. 

Mrs. Abingdon, another charming and clever actress, was 
also a denizen of Twickenham, which became the most fash- 
ionable village near the metropolis. Mrs. Pritchard, likewise, 
was attracted there ; but the proximity of the Countess of 
Suffolk, who lived at Marble Hill, was the delight of a great 
portion of Horace Walpole's life. Her reminiscences, her an- 
ecdotes, her experience, were valuable as well as entertaining 
to one who was forever gathering up materials for history, or 
for biography, or for letters to absent friends. 

In his own family he found little to cheer him : but if he 
hated one or two more especially — and no one could hate 
more intensely than Horace Walpole — it was his uncle, Lord 



DEATH OF HORATIO WALPOLE. 293 

Walpole, and his cousin, that nobleman's son, whom he christ- 
ened Pigwiggin ; " my monstrous uncle ;" " that old buftbon, 
my uncle," are terms which occur in his letters, and he speaks 
of the bloody civil wars between "Horatio Walpole" and 
" Horace Walpole." 

Horatio Walpole, the brother of Sir Robert, was created in 
June, 1756, Baron Walpole of Wolterton, as a recompense for 
fifty years passed in the public service — an honor which he 
only survived nine months. He expired in February, 1757. 
His death removed one subject of bitter dislike from the mind 
of Horace ; but enough remained in the family to excite grief 
and resentment. 

Toward his own two brothers, Robert, Earl of Orford, and 
Edward Walpole, Horace the younger, as he was styled in 
contradistinction to his uncle, bore very little affection. His 
feelings, however, for his nephew George, who succeeded his 
father as Earl of Orford in 1751, were more creditable to his 
heart; yet he gives a description of this ill-fated young man 
in his letters, which shows at once pride and disapprobation. 
One lingers with regret over the character and the destiny of 
this fine young nobleman, whose existence was rendered mis- 
erable by frequent attacks, at intervals, of insanity. 

Never was there a handsomer, a more popular, a more en- 
ffao-ino- beinof than George, third Earl of Orford. When he 
appeared at the head of the Norfolk regiment of militia, of 
which he was colonel, even the great Lord Chatham broke out 
into enthusiasm : " Nothing," he wrote, " could make a bet- 
ter appearance than the two Norfolk battalions; Lord Orford, 
with the front of Mars himself, and really the greatest figure 
under arms I ever saw, was the theme of every tongue." 

His person and air, Horace Walpole declared, had a noble 
wildness in them: crowds followed the battalions when the 
king reviewed them in Hyde Park ; and among the gay young 
officers in their scarlet uniforms, faced with black, in their 
buff waistcoats and gold buttons, none was so conspicuous 
for martial bearing as Lord Orford, although classed by his 
uncle " among the knights of shires who had never in their 
lives shot any thing but woodcocks." 

But there was a peculiarity of character in the young peer 
which shocked Horace. " No man," he says in one of his 
letters, " ever felt such a disposition to love another as I did 
to love him. I flattered myself that he would restore some 
lustre to our house — at least not let it totally sink ; but I am 

forced to give him up, and all my Walpole views 

He has a good breeding, and attention when he is with you 
that is even flattering He promises, offers every 



294 A VISIT TO HOUGHTON. 

thing one can wish ; but this is all : the instant he leaves 
you, -all the world are nothing to him ; he would not give 
himself the least trouble in the world to give any one satis- 
faction ; yet this is mere indolence of mind, not of body : his 
whole pleasure is outrageous exercise." 

"He is," in another place Horace adds, "the most selfish 
man in the world : without being in the least interested, he 
loves nobody but himself, yet neglects every view of fortune 
and ambition. Yet," he concludes, "it is impossible not to 
love him when one sees him : impossible to esteem him when 
one thinks on him." 

The young lord, succeeding to an estate deeply encumbered, 
both by his father and grandfather, rushed on the turf, and 
involved himself still more. In vain did Horace the younger 
endeavor to secure for him the hand of Miss Nicholls, an heir- 
ess with £50,000, and, to that end, placed the young lady with 
Horace the elder (Lord Walpole), at Wolterton. The scheme 
failed : the crafty old politician thought he might as well ben- 
efit his own sons as his nephew, for he had himself claims on 
the Houghton estate which he expected Miss Nicholls's fortune 
might help to liquidate. 

At length the insanity and recklessness displayed by his 
nephew — the handsome, martial George — induced poor Hor- 
ace to take aftairs in his own hands. His reflections, on his 
paying a visit to Houghton, to look after the property there, 
are pathetically expressed : 

"Here I am again at Houghton," he writes in March, 1761, 
" and alone ; in this spot where (except two hours last month) 
I have not been in sixteen years. Think what a crowd of 
reflections! . . . Here I am probably for the last time 
of my life : every clock that strikes, tells me I am an hour 
nearer to yonder church — that church into which I have not 
yet had courage to enter ; where lies that mother on whom I 
doted, and who doted on me ! There are the two rival mis- 
tresses of Houghton, neither of whom ever wished to enjoy it. 
There, too, is he who founded its greatness — to contribute to 
whose fall Europe was embroiled ; there he sleeps in quiet and 
dignity, while his friend and his foe — rather his false ally and 
real enemy — Newcastle and Bath, are exhausting the dregs of 
their pitiful lives in squabbles and pamphlets." 

When he looked at the pictures — that famous Houghton col- 
lection — the surprise of Horace was excessive. Accustomed 
to see nothing elsewhere but daubs, he gazed with ecstasy on 
them. "The majesty of Italian ideas," he says, "almost sinks 
before the warm nature of Italian coloring ! Alas ! don't I grow 
old ?" 



FAMILY MISFORTUNES. 295 

As he lingered in the Gallery, with mingled pride and sad- 
ness, a party arrived to see the house — a man and three women, 
in riding-dresses — who "rode post" through the apartments. 
" I could not," he adds, " hurry before them fast enough ; they 
were not so long in seeing the whole gallery as I could have 
been in one room, to examine what I knew by heart. I re- 
member formerly being often diverted with this kind of seers ; 
they come, ask what such a room is called in which Sir Robert 
lay, write it down, admire a lobster or a cabbage in a Market 
Piece, dispute whether the last room was green or purple, and 
then hurry to the inn, for fear the fish should be overdressed. 
How different my sensations ! not a picture here but recalls a 
history; not one but I remember in Downing Street, or Chel- 
sea, where queens and crowds admired them, though seeing, 
them as little as these travelers !"* 

After tea he strolled into the garden. They told him it 
was now called a 2^€astire-(/ro2(nd. To Horace it was a scene 
of desolation — a floral Nineveh. " What a dissonant idea of 
pleasure ! those groves, those allees, where I have passed so 
many charming moments, were now stripped up or overgrown 
— many fond paths I could not unravel, though with an exact 
clew in my memory. I met two gamekeepers, and a thousand 
hares! In the days when all my soul was tuned to pleasure 
and vivacity (and you will think perhaps it is far from being 
out of tune yet), I hated Houghton and its solitude ; yet I 
loved this garden, as now, with many regrets, I love Hough- 
ton — Houghton, I know not what to call it — a monument of 
grandeur or ruin !" 

Although he did not go with the expectation of finding a 
land flowing with milk and honey, the sight of all this ruin 
long saddened his thoughts. All was confusion, disorder, 
debts, mortgages, sales, pillage, villainy, waste, folly, and mad- 
ness. The nettles and brambles in the park were up to his 
shoulders ; horses had been turned into the garden, and ban- 
ditti lodged in every cottage. 

The perpetuity of livings that came up to the very park 
palings had been sold, and the farms let at half their value. 
Certainly, if Houghton were bought by Sir Robert Walpole 
With public money, that public was now avenged. 

The owner of this ruined property had just stemmed the 
torrent ; but the worst was to come. The pictures were sold, 
and to Russia they went. 

While thus harassed by family misfortunes, other annoy- 

* Sir Robert Walpole purchased a house and garden at Chelsea in 1722, 
near the college adjoining Gough House. — Cunningham's "London." 



296 POOR CHATTERTOX ! 

ances came. The mournful story of Chatterton's fate was 
painfully mixed up with the tenor of Horace Walpole's life. 

The gifted and unfortunate Thomas Chatterton was born at 
Bristol in 1752. Even from his birth fate seemed to pursue 
him, for he was a posthumous son : and if the loss of a father 
in the highest rauks of life be severely felt, how much more 
so is it to be deplored in those which are termed the working 
classes ! 

The friendless enthusiast was slow in learning to read ; but 
when the illuminated capitals of an old book were presented 
to him, he quickly learned his letters. This fact, and his being 
taught to read out of a black-letter Bible, are said to have ac- 
counted for his facility in the imitation of antiquities. 

Pensive and taciturn, he picked up education at a charity- 
school, until apprenticed to a scrivener, when he began that 
battle of life which ended to him so fatally. 

Upon very slight accidents did his destiny hinge. In those 
days women worked with thread, and used thread -papers. 
Now paper was dear : dainty matrons liked tasty thread-pa- 
pers. A pretty set of thread-papers, with birds or flowers 
painted on each, was no mean present for a friend. Chatter- 
ton, a quiet child, one day noticed that his mother's thread- 
papers Avere of no ordinary materials. They were made of 
l^archmeut, and on this parchment were some of the black-letter 
characters by which his childish attention had been fixed to 
his book. The fact was, that his uncle was sexton to the an- 
cient church of St. Mary Redeliffe, at Bristol ; and the parch- 
ment was the fruit of theft. Chatterton's father had carried 
off from a room in the church, certain ancient manuscripts, 
Avhich had been left about; being originally extracted from 
what was called Mr. Canynge's coffin. Xow, Mr. Canynge, an 
eminent merchant, had rebuilt St. Mary Redclifle in the reign 
of Edward IV. : and the parchments, therefore, were of some 
antiquity. The antiquary groans over their loss in vain : Chat- 
terton's father had covered his books with them ; his mother 
had used up the strips for thread-papers; and Thomas Chat- 
terton himself contrived to abstract a considerable portion also, 
for his own purposes. 

He was ingenious, industrious, a poet by nature, and, won- 
derful to say, withal a herald by taste. Upon his nefarious 
possessions, he founded a scheme of literary forgeries ; pur- 
porting to be ancient pieces of poetry found in Canynge's 
chest; and described as being the production of Thomas Can- 
ynge and of his friend, one Thomas Rowley, a priest. Money 
and books were sent to Chatterton in return for little strips of 
vellum, which he passed off as the original itself; and the sue- 



walpole' s concern with chattekton. 297 

cessful forger might now be seen in deep thought, walking in 
the meadows near Redcliffe; a marked, admired poetic youth. 

In 1769, Chatterton wrote to Horace Walpole, offering to 
send him some accounts of eminent painters who had flourish- 
ed at Bristol, and at the same time mentioning the discovery 
of the poems, and inclosing some specimens. In a subsequent 
letter he begged Walpole to aid him in his wish to be treed 
from his then servile condition, and to be placed in one more 
congenial to his pursuits. 

In his choice of a patron poor Chatterton made a fatal mis- 
take. The benevolence of Horace was of a general kind, and 
never descended to any thing obscure or unappreciated. There 
was a certain hardness in that nature of his which had so pleas- 
ant an aspect. " An artist," he once said, " has his pencils — 
an author his pens — and the public must reward them as it 
pleases." Alas ! he forgot how long it is before penury, even 
ennobled by genius, can make itself seen, heard, approved, re- 
paid: how vast is the influence of prestige! how generous the 
hand which is extended to those in want, even if in error ! 
All that Horace did, however, was strictly correct : he showed 
the poems to Gray and Mason, who pronounced them forge- 
ries ; and he wrote a cold and reproving letter to the starving 
author: and no one could blame him: Chatterton demanded 
back his poems ; Walpole was going to Paris, and forgot to 
return them. Another letter came : the wounded poet again 
demanded them, adding, that W'alpole would not have dared 
to use him so had he not been poor. The poerus were return- 
ed in a blank cover: and here all Walpole's concern with 
Thomas Chatterton ends. All this happened in 17G9. In 
August, 1770, the remains of the unhappy youth were carried 
to the burial-ground of Shoe Lane workhouse, near Holborn. 
He had swallowed arsenic ; had lingered a day in agonies ; and 
then, at the age of eighteen, expired. Starvation had prompt- 
ed the act : yet on the day before he had committed it, he had 
refused a dinner, of which he was invited by his hostess to 
partake, assuring her that he was not hungry. Just or unjust', 
the world has never forgiven Horace Walpole for Chatterton's 
misery. His indifference has been contrasted with the gener- 
osity of Edmund Burke to Crabbe : a generosity to which we 
owe "The Village," "The Borough," and to which Crabbe 
owed his peaceful old age, and almost his existence. The 
eases were different; but Crabbe had his faults — and Chatter- 
ton was worth saving. It is well for genius that there are 
souls in the world more sympathizing, less worldly, and more 
indulgent, than those of such men as Horace Walpole. Even 
the editor of " Walpoliana" lets judgment go by default. " As 

N 2 



298 ANECDOTE OP MADAME GEOPFEIN. 

to artists," he says, " he paid them what they earned, and he 
commonly employed mean ones, that the reward might be 
smaller." 

Let ns change the strain : stilled be the mournful note on 
which we have rested too long. What have wits and beaux 
and men of society to do with poets and beggars ? Behold, 
Horace, when he has written his monitory letter, packs up for 
Paris. Let us follow him there, and see him in the very cen- 
tre of his pleasures — in the salon of La Marquise du Defland. 

Horace Walpole had perfected his education, as a fine gen- 
tleman, by his intimacy with Madame GeoflVin, to whom Lady 
Hervey had introduced him. She called him le nouveau Riche- 
lieu; and Horace was sensible of so great a compliment from 
a woman at once " spirituelle and pieuse''' — a combination rare 
in France. Nevertheless, she had the national views of mat- 
rimony. " What have you done, Madame," said a foreigner to 
her, " with the poor man I used to see here, who never spoke 
a word ?" 

" Ah, mon Dieu /" was the reply, " that was my husband : 
he is dead." She spoke in the same tone as if she had been 
specifying the last new opera, or referring to the latest work 
in vogue : things just passed away. 

The Marquise du Deffand was a very different personage 
to Madame Geoffrin, whose great enemy she was. When 
Horace Walpole first entered into the society of the marquise, 
she was stone blind, and old ; but retained not only her wit, 
and her memory, but her passions. Passions, like artificial 
flowers, are unbecoming to age ; and those of the witty, athe- 
istical marquise are almost revolting. Scandal still attached 
her name to that of Henault, of whom Voltaire wrote the epi- 
taph beginning 

"Henault, fameux par vos scupers 
Et votre ' chronologic,' " etc. 

Henault was for many years deaf; and, during the whole of 
his life, disagreeable. There was something farcical in the old 
man's receptions on his death-bed ; while, among the rest of 
the company, came Madame du Defland, a blind old woman of 
seventy, who, bawling in his ear, aroused the lethargic man by 
inquiring after a former rival of hers, Madame de Castelmaron 
— about whom he went on babbling until death stopj^ed his 
voice. 

She was seventy years of age when Horace Walpole, at 
fifty, became her passion. She was poor and disreputable, 
and even the high position of having been mistress to the 
liegent could not save her from being decried by a large 



THE MISS BERK VS. 299 

portion of that society which centred round the bel esprit. 
" She was," observes the biographer of Horace Walpole (the 
lamented author of the " Crescent and the Cross"), " always 
gay, always charming — every thing but a Christian." The 
loss of her eyesight did not impair the remains of her beauty : 
her replies, her compliments, were brilliant; even from one 
whose best organs of expression were mute. 

A frequent guest at her suppers, Walpole's kindness, real 
or pretended, soon made inroads on a heart still susceptible. 
The ever-green passions of this venerable sinner threw out 
fresh shoots ; and she became enamored of the attentive and 
admired Englishman. Horace was susceptible of ridicule: 
there his somewhat icy heart was easily touched. Partly in 
vanity, partly in playfulness, he encouraged the sentimental 
exaggeration of his correspondent; but, becoming afraid of 
the world's laughter, ended by reproving her warmth, and by 
chilling, under the refrigerating influence of his cautions, all 
the romance of the octogenarian. 

In later days, however, after his solicitude — partly soothed 
by the return of his letters to Madame du Deffand, partly by 
her death — had completely subsided, a happier friendship was 
permitted to solace his now increasing infirmities, as well as to 
enhance his social pleasures. 

It was during the year 1788, when he was living in retire- 
ment at Strawberry, that his auspicious friendship was formed. 
The only grain of ambition he had left, he declared, was to 
believe himself forgotten ; that was " the thread that had run 
through his life ;" " so true," he adds, " except the folly of be- 
ing an author, has been what I said last year to the Prince" 
(afterward George IV.) " when he asked me ' if I was a Free- 
mason,' I replied, ' No, sir ; I never was any thing.' " 

Lady Charleville told him that some of her friends had 
been to see Strawberry. " Lord !" cried one lady, " who is 
that Mr. Walpole ?" " Lord !" cried a second ; " don't you 
know the great epicure, Mr. Walpole?" "Who ?" cried the 
first — "great epicure! you mean the antiquarian." "Surely," 
adds Horace, " this anecdote may take its place in the chap- 
ter of local fame." « 

But he reverts to his new acquisition — the acquaintance 
of the Miss Berrys, who had accidentally taken a house next 
to his at Strawberry Hill. Their story, he adds, was a curi- 
ous one: their descent Scotch; their grandfather had an estate 
of £5000 a year, but disinherited his son on account of his 
marrying a woman with no fortune. She died, and the grand- 
father, wishing for an heir-male, pressed the widower to mar- 
ry again: he refused; and said he would devote himself to the 



300 HORACE S TWO " STRAW BERRIES. 

education of his two daughters. The second son generously 
gave up £800 a year to his brother, and the two motherless 
girls were taken to the Continent, whence they returned the 
" best-informed and most perfect creatures that Horace Wal- 
pole ever saw at their age." 

Sensible, natural, frank, their conversation proved most 
agreeable to a man who was sated of grand society, and sick 
of vanity until he had indulged in vexation of spirit. He dis- 
covered by chance only — for there was no pedantry in these 
truly well-educated women — that the eldest understood Latin, 
and " was a perfect Frenchwoman in her language." Then 
the youngest drew well ; and copied one of Lady Di Beau- 
clerk's pictures, "The Gipsies," though she had never at- 
tempted colors before. Then, as to looks : Mary, the eldest, 
had a sweet face, the more interesting from being pale ; with 
fine dark eyes that were lighted up when she spoke. Agnes, 
the younger, was " hardly to be called handsome, but almost ;" 
with an agreeable, sensible countenance. It is remarkable 
that women thus delineated — not beauties, yet not plain — are 
always the most fascinating to men. The sisters doted on 
each other : Mary taking the lead in society. " I must even 
tell you," Horace wrote to the Countess of Ossory, " that they 
dress within the bounds of fashion, but without the excres- 
cences and balconies with which modern hoydens overwhelm 
and barricade their persons." (One would almost have sup- 
posed that Horace had lived in the days of crinoline.) 

The first night that Horace met the two sisters, he refused 
to be introduced to them : having heard so much of them 
that he concluded they would be " all pretension." The sec- 
ond night that he met them, he sat next Mary, and found her 
an " angel both inside and out." He did not know which he 
liked best; but Mary's face, which was formed for a senti- 
mental novel, or still more, for genteel comedy, riveted him, he 
owned. Mr. Berry, the father, was a little " merry man with 
a round face," whom no one would have suspected of sacri- 
ficing " all for love, and the world well lost." This delight- 
ful family visited him every Sunday evening ; the region of 
Twickenham being too " proclamatory" for cards to be intro- 
duced on the seventh day, conversation was tried instead; 
thankful, indeed, was Horace for the " pearls," as he styled 
them, thus thrown in his path. His two " Straw Berries," as 
he christened them, were henceforth the theme of eyery let- 
ter. He had set up a printing-press many years previously at 
Strawberry, and on taking the young ladies to see it, he re- 
membered the gallantry of his former days, and they found 
these stanzas in type : 



TAPPING A NEW REIGN. 301 

"To Mary's lips has ancient Rome 
Her purest language taught ; 
And from the modern city home 
Agnes its pencil brought. 

"Rome's ancient Horace sweetly chants 
Such maids with lyric fire ; 
Albion's old Horace sings nor paints, 
He only can admire. 

" Still would his press their fame record, 
So amiable the pair is ! 
But, all ! how vain to think his word 
Can add a Straw to Berry's." 

On the following day, Mary, whom he terms the Latin 
Nymph, sent the following lines : 

"Had Rome's famed Horace thus addrest 
His Lydia or his Lyce, 
He had ne'er so oft complained their breast 
To him was cold and icy. 

" But had they sought their joy to explain, 
Or praise their generous bard, 
Perhaps, like me, they had tried in vain, 
And felt the task too hard." 

The society of this family gave him the truest, and perhaps 
the only relish he ever had of domestic life. But his mind 
was harassed toward the close of the eighteenth century, by 
the insanity not only of his nephew, but by the great national 
calamity, that of the king. "Every eighty-eight seems," he 
remarks, "to be a favorite period with fate;" he was "too 
ancient," he said, " to tap what might almost be called a new 
reign ;" of which he was not likely to see much. He never 
pretended to penetration, but his foresight, " if he gave it the 
rein," would not prognosticate much felicity to the country 
from the madness of his father, and the probable regency of 
the Prince of Wales. His happiest relations were now not 
with politics or literature, but with Mrs. Darner and the Miss 
Berrys, to whom he wrote: "I am afraid of protesting how 
much I delight in your society, lest I should seem to affect be- 
ing gallant ; but, if two negatives make an affirmative, why 
may not two ridicules compose one piece of sense ? and, there- 
fore, as I am in love with you both, I trust it is a proof of the 
good sense of your devoted — H. Walpole." 

He was doomed, in the decline of life, to witness two great 
national convulsions: of the insurrection of 1745 he wrote 
feelingly — justly — almost pathetically: forty-five years later, 
he was tired, he said, of railing against French barbarity and 
folly. " Legislators ! a Senate ! to neglect laws, in order to 
annihilate coats-of-arms and liveries !" George Selwyn said, 



302 THE SIGN OF THE GOTHIC CASTLE. 

that Monsieur the king's brother was the only man of rank 
from whom they could not take a title. His alarm at the idea 
of his two young friends going to the Continent was excessive. 
The flame of revolution had burst forth at Florence : Flanders 
was not a safe road; dreadful horrors had been perpetrated 
at Avignon. Then he relates a characteristic anecdote of 
poor Marie Antoinette. She went with the king to see the 
manufacture of glass. As they passed the Halle, the pois- 
sarcles hurraed them. "Upon my word," said the queen, 
" these folks are civiler when you visit them than when they 
visit you." 

Walpole's affection for the Miss Berrys cast a glow of hap- 
piness over the fast-ebbing year of his life. " In happy days," — * 
he wrote to them when they were abroad, " I called you my 
dear wives ; now I can only think of you as darling children, \ 
of whom I am bereaved." He was proud of their affection ; 
proud of their spending many hours with " a very old man," 
while they were the objects of general admiration. These 
charming women survived until our own time: the centre of a 
circle of the leading characters in literature, politics, art, rank, 
and virtue. They are remembered with true regret. The 
fullness of their age perfected the promise of their youth. 
Samuel Rogers used to say that they had lived in the reign of 
Queen Anne, so far back seemed their memories which were 
so coupled to the past ; but the youth of their minds, their 
feelings, their intelligence, remained almost to the last. 

For many years Horace Walpole continued, in spite of in- 
cessant attacks of the gout, to keep almost open house at 
Strawberry ; in short, he said, he kept an inn — the sign, the 
Gothic Castle: "Take my advice," he wrote to a friend, 
" never build a charming house for yourself between London 
and Hampton Court ; every body will live in it but you." 

The death of Lady Suffolk, in 1767, had been an essential 
loss to her partial, and not too rigid neighbors. Two days be- 
fore the death of George II., she had gone to Kensington, not 
knowing that there was a review there. Hemmed in by coach- 
es, she found herself close to George II. and to Lady Yar- 
mouth. Neither' of them knew her — a circumstance which 
greatly affected the countess. 

Horace Walpole was now desirous of growing old with dig- 
nity. He had no wish " to dress up a withered person, nor to 
drag it about to public places;" but he was equally averse 
from "sitting at home, wrapped up in flannels," to receive 
condolences from people he did not care for — and attentions 
from relations who were impatient for his death. Well might 
a writer in the " Quarterly Review" remark, that our most 



GROWING OLD WITH DIGNITY. 303 

useful lessons in reading Walpole's Letters are not only de- 
rived from his sound sense, but from "considering this man of 
the world, full of information and sparkling with vivacity, 
stretched on a sick-bed, and apprehending all the tedious lan- 
guor of helpless decrepitude and deserted solitude." His later 
years had been diversified by correspondence with Hannah 
More, who sent him her poems of the Bas Bleu, into which 
she had introduced his name. In 1786 she visited him at 
Strawberry Hill. He was then a martyr to the gout, but with 
spirits gay as ever : " I never knew a man suffer pain with such 
entire patience," was Hannah More's remark. His correspond- 
ence with her continued regularly ; but that with the charm- 
ing sisters was delightfully interrupted by their residence at 
Little Strawberry Hill — Cliveden.) as it was also called, where 
day after day, night after night, they gleaned stores from that 
rich fund of anecdote which went back to the days of George 
I., touched even on the anterior epoch of Anne, and came in 
volumes of amusement down to the very era when the old 
man was sitting by his parlor fire, happy with his icives near 
him, resigned and cheerful. For his young friends he com- 
posed his " Reminiscences of the Court of England." 

He still wrote cheerfully of his physical state, in which eye- 
sight was perfect ; hearing little impaired ; and though his 
hands and feet were crippled, he could use them ; and since 
he neither " wished to box, to wrestle, nor to dance a horn- 
pipe," he was contented. 

His character became softer, his wit less caustic, his heart 
more tender, his talk more reverent, as he approached the 
term of along, prosperous life — and knew, practically, the small 
value of all that he had once too fondly prized. 

His later years were disturbed by the marriage of his niece 
Maria Waldegrave to the Duke of Gloucester; but the se- 
verest interruption to his peace was his own succession to an 
earldom. 

In 1791, George, Earl of Orford, expired ; leaving an estate 
encumbered with debt, and, added to the bequest, a series of 
lawsuits threatened to break down all remaining comfort in 
the mind of the uncle, who had already suffered so much on 
the young man's account. 

He disdained the honors which brought him such solid 
trouble, with such empty titles, and for some time refused to 
sign himself otherwise, but "Uncle to the late Earl of Orford." 
He was certainly not likely to be able to walk in his robes to 
the House of Lords, or to grace a levee. However, he thank- 
ed God he was free from pain. " Since all my fingers are use- 
less," he wrote to Hannah More, " and that I have only six 



304 walpole's last hours. 

hairs left, I am not very much grieved at not being able to 
comb my head !" To Hannah More he wrote, in all sincerity, 
referring to his elevation to the peerage : " For the other 
empty metamorphosis that has happened to the outward man, 
you do me justice in believing that it can do nothing but tease 
me ; it is being called names in one's old age :" in fact, he 
reckoned on being styled " Lord Methusalem." He had lived 
to hear of the cruel deaths of the once gay and high-born 
friends whom he had known in Paris, by the guillotine : he 
had lived to execrate the monsters who drove the grandest 
heroine of modern times, Marie Antoinette, to madness ; he 
lived to censure the infatuation of religious zeal in the Bir- 
mingham riots. " Are not the devils escaped out of the swine, 
and overrunning the earth headlong ?" he asked in one of his 
letters. 

He had offered his hand, and all the ambitious views which 
it opened, to each of the Miss Berry s successively, but they re- 
fused to bear his name, though they still cheered his solitude : 
and, strange to say, two of the most admired and beloved 
women of their time remained single. 

In 1796, the sinking invalid was persuaded to remove to 
Berkeley Square, to be within reach of good and prompt ad- 
vice. He consented unwillingly, for his " Gothic Castle" was 
his favorite abode. He left it with a presentiment that he 
should see it no more; but he followed the proffered advice, 
and in the spring of the year was established in Berkeley 
Square. His mind was still clear. He seems to have cherish- 
ed to the last a concern for that literary fame which he affect- 
ed to despise. " Literature has," he says, " many revolutions ; 
if an author could rise from the dead, after a hundred years, 
what would be his surprise at the adventures of his works ! 
I often say, perhaps my books may be published in Paternos- 
ter Row!" He would indeed have been astonished at the 
vast circulation of his Letters, and the popularity which has 
carried them into every aristocratic family in England. It is 
remarkable that among the middle and lower classes they are 
far less known. He was essentially the chronicler, as well as 
the wit and beau, of St. James's, of Windsor, and Richmond. 
At last he declared that he should " be content with a sprig 
of rosemary" thrown on him when the parson of the parish 
commits his " dust to dust." The end of his now suffering 
existence was near at hand. Irritability, one of the unpitied 
accompaniments of weakness, seemed to compete with the 
gathering clouds of mental darkness as the last hour drew on. 
At intervals there were flashes of a wit that appeared at that 
solemn moment hardly natural, and that must have startled, 



LET U>S NOT BE UNGRATEFUL. :J05 

rather than pleased, the watchful friends around him. He be- 
came unjust in his fretfulness, and those who loved him most 
could not wish to see him survive the wreck of his intellect. 
Fever came on, and he died on the 2d of March, 1797. 

He had collected his letters from his friends : these epistles 
were deposited in two boxes, one marked with an A., the other 
with a B. The chest A. was not to be opened until the eldest 
son of his grandniece. Lady Laura, should attain the age of 
twenty-five. The chest was found to contain memoirs, and 
bundles of letters ready for publication. 

It was singular, at the sale of the effects at Strawberry Hill, 
to see this chest, with the MSS. in the clean Uoratian hand, 
and to reflect how poignant would have been the anguish of 
the writer could he have seen his Gothic Castle given up for 
fourteen days, to all that could pain the living or degrade the 
dead. 

Peace to his manes, prince of letter-writers; prince com- 
panion of beaux ; wit of the highest order ! Without thy pen, 
society in the eighteenth century would have been to us almost 
as dead as the beau monde of Pompeii, or the remains of 
Etruscan leaders of the ton. Let us not be ungrateful to our 
Horace : we owe him more than we could ever have calculated 
on before we knew him through his works : prejudiced, he was 
not false ; cold, he was rarely cruel ; egotistical, he was seldom 
vainglorious. Every age should have a Horace Walpole ; ev- 
ery country possess a chronicler so sure, so keen to perceive, 
so exact to delineate peculiarities, manners, characters, and 
events. 



GEORGE SELWYN. 

I have heard, at times, of maiden ladies of a certain age 
who found pleasure in the affection of " spotted snakes with 
double tongue, thorny hedge-hogs, newts, and in live worms." 
I know that Leonardo da Vinci was partial to all that is hor- 
rible in nature. I frequently meet ladies who think conversa- 
tion lacks interest without the recital of " melancholy deaths," 
" fatal diseases," and " mournful cases ;" on ne dispute pas les 
gouts, and certainly the taste for the night side of nature seems 
immensely prevalent among the lower orders — in whom, per- 
haps, the terrible only can rouse from a sullen insensibility. 
What happy people, I always think to myself, when I hear of 
the huge attendance on the last tragic performance at New- 
gate; how very little they can see of mournful and horrible in 
common life, if they seek it out so eagerly, and relish it so 
thoroughly, when they find it ! I don't know ; for my own 
part, gaudeamus. I have always thought that the text, " Bless- 
ed are they that mourn," referred to the inner private life, not 
to a perpetual display of sackcloth and ashes ; but I know not. 
I can understand the weeping-willow taste among people, who 
have too little wit or too little Christianity to be cheerful, but 
it is a wonder to find the luxury of gloom united to the keenest 
perception of the laughable in such a man as George Selwyn. 

If human beings could be made pets, like Miss Tabitha's 
snake or toad, Selwyn would have fondled a hangman. He 
loved the noble art of execution, and was a connoisseur of the 
execution of the art. In childhood he must have decapitated 
his rocking-horse, hanged his doll in a miniature gallows, and 
burnt his bawbles at mimic stakes. The man whose calm eye 
was watched for the quiet sparkle that announced — and only 
that ever did announce it — the flashing wit within the mind, 
by a gay crowd of loungers at Arthur's, might be found next 
day rummaging among coffins in a damp vault, glorying in a 
mummy, confessing and preparing a live criminal, paying any 
sum for a relic of a dead one, or pressing eagerly forward to 
witness the dying agonies of a condemned man. 

Yet Walpole and Warner both bore the highest testimony 
to the goodness of his heart ; and it is impossible to doubt 
that his nature was as gentle as a woman's. There have been 
other instances of even educated men delierhtina; in scenes of 



308 ANECDOTES OF SELWYN S MOTHER. 

suffering; but in general their characters have been more or 
less gross, their hearts more or less insensible. The husband 
of Madame Recamier went daily to see the guillotine do its 
vile work during the Reign of Terror ; but then he was a man 
who never wept over the death of a friend. The man who 
was devoted to a little child, whom he adopted and treated 
with the tenderest care, was veiy different from M. Recamier 
— and that he had a heart there is no doubt. He was an 
anomaly, and famous for being so ; though, perhaps, his well- 
known eccentricity was taken advantage of by his witty friends, 
and many a story fathered on Selwyn which has no origin but 
in the brain of its narrator. 

George Augustus Selwyn, then, famous for his wit, and no- 
torious for his love of horrors, was the second son of a country 
gentleman, of Matson, in Gloucestershire, Colonel John Selwyn, 
who had been an aid-de-camp of Marlborough's, and afterward 
a frequenter of the courts of the first two Georges. He inher- 
ited his wit chiefly from his mother, Mary, the daughter of 
General Farington or Farringdon, of the county of Kent. Wal- 
pole tells us that she figured among the beauties of the court 
of the Prince and Princess of Wales, and was bedchamber- 
woman to Queen Caroline. Her character was not spotless, 
for we hear of an intrigue, which her own mistress imparted 
in confidence to the Duchess of Orleans (the mother of the 
Regent : they wrote on her tomb Cy gist Voisivete, because 
idleness is the mother of all vice), and which eventually found 
its way into the " Utrecht Gazette." It was Mrs. Selwyn, too, 
who said to George II., that he was the last person she^hould 
ever have an intrigue with, because she was sure he would tell 
the queen of it : it was well known that that very virtuous 
sovereign made his wife the confidante of his amours, which 
was even more shameless than young De Sevigne's taking ad- 
vice from his mother on his intrigue with Ninon de FEnclos. 
She seems to have been reputed a wit, for Walpole retains her 
mots as if they were worth it, but they are not very remarka- 
ble : for instance, when Miss Pelham lost a pair of diamond 
earrings, which she had borrowed, and tried to faint when the 
loss was discovered, some one called for lavender-drops as a 
restorative. " Pooh !" cried Mrs. Selwyn, " give her diamond- 
drops." 

George Augustus was born on the 11th of August, 1719. 
Walpole says that he knew him at eight years old, and as the 
two were at Eton about the same time, it is presumed that 
they were contemporaries there. In fact, a list of the boys 
there, in 1732, furnished to Eliot Warburton, contains the 
names of Walpole, Selwyn, Edgecombe, and Conway, all in 



selwyn's college days. 309 

after life intimate friends and correspondents. From Eton to 
Oxford was the natural course, and George was duly entered 
at Hertford College. He did not long grace Alma Mater, for 
the grand tour had to be made, and London life to be begun, 
but he was there long enough to contract the usual Oxford 
debts, which his father consented to pay more than once. It 
is amusing to find the son getting Dr. Newton to write him a 
contrite and respectful letter to the angry parent, to liquidate 
the " small accounts" accumulated in London and Oxford as 
early as 1740. Three years later we find him in Paris, leading 
a gay life, and writing respectful letters to England for more 
money. Previously to this, however, he had obtained, through 
his father, the sinecure of Clerk of the Irons and surveyor of 
the Meltings at the Mint, a comfortable little appointment, the 
duties of which were performed by deputy, while its holder 
contented himself with honestly acknowledging the salary, and 
dining once a week, when in town, with the officers of the 
Mint, and at the Government's expense. 

So far the young gentleman went on well enough, but in 
1744 he returned to England, and his rather rampant charac- 
ter showed itself in more than one disgraceful affair. 

Among the London shows was Orator Henley, a clergyman 
and clergyman's son, and a member of St. John's, Cambridge. 
He had come to London about this time, and instituted a series 
of lectures on universal knowledge and primitive Christianity. 
He styled himself a Rationalist, a title then more honorable 
than it is now ; and, in grandiloquent language, " spouted" on 
religious subjects to an audience admitted at a shilling a head. 
On one occasion he announced a disputation among any two 
of his hearers, offering to give an impartial hearing and judg- 
ment to both. Selwyn and the young Lord Carteret were pre- 
pared, and stood up, the one to defend the ignorance, the other 
the impudence, of Orator Henley himself; so, at least, it is in- 
ferred from a passage in D'Israeli the Elder. The uproar that 
ensued can well be imagined. Henley himself made his escape 
by a back door. His pulpit, all gilt, has been immortalized by 
Pope, as " Henley's gilt tub ;" in which 

"Imbrown'd with native bronze, lo! Henley stands, 
Tuning his voice and balancing his hands." 

The affair gave rise to a correspondence between the Orator 
and his young friends ; who, doubtless, came off best in the 
matter. 

This was harmless enough, but George's next freak was not 
so excusable. The circumstances of this affair are narrated in 
a letter from Captain Nicholson, his friend, to George Selwyn ; 
and may, therefore, be relied on. It appears that being at a 



310 selwyn's blasphemous freak. 

certain club in Oxford, at a wine-party Avitli his friends, George 
sent to a certain silversmith's for a certain chalice, intrusted 
to the shopkeeper from a certain church to be repaired in a 
certain manner. This being brought, Master George — then, 
be it remembered, not at the delicate and frivolous age of most 
Oxford boys, but at the mature one of six-and-twenty — filled 
it with wine, and handing it round, used the sacred w r or<ls, 
" Drink this in remembrance of me." This, if any thing can 
be so, was a blasphemous parody of the most sacred rite of the 
Church. Selwyn w T as not a man to inquire whether that rite, 
so practiced, was in effect the rite instituted by our Savior. 
Had there even been that doubt in his mind, which certainly 
there is in the minds of some, the manner of indicating it would 
have been unpardonable. All he could say for himself was, 
that he was drunk when he did it. The other plea, that he did 
it in ridicule of the transubstantiation of the Romish Church, 
will not hold water at all ; and was most weakly put forward. 
Let Oxford Dons be what they will ; let them put a stop to 
all religious inquiry, and nearly expel Adam Smith for reading 
Hume's "Essay on Human Nature;" let them be, as many al- 
lege, narrow-minded, hypocritical, and ignorant ; we can not 
charge them with wrong-dealing in expelling the originator of 
such open blasphemy, wdiich nothing can be found to palliate, 
and of which its perpetrator did not appear to repent, rather 
complaining that the treatment of the Dons was harsh. The 
act of expulsion was, of course, considered in the same light 
by his numerous acquaintance, many of whom condoled with 
him on the occasion. It is true, the Oxford Dons are often 
charged with injustice and partiality, and too often the evi- 
dence is not sufficiently strong to excuse their judgments ; but 
in this the evidence was not denied ; only a palliative was put 
in, which every one can see through. The only injustice we 
can discover in this case is, that the head of Hart Hall, as Hert- 
ford College was called, seems to have been influenced in pro- 
nouncing his sentence of expulsion by certain previous suspi- 
cions, having no bearing on the question before him, wdiich 
had been entertained by another set of tutors — those of Christ- 
church — where Selwyn had many friends, and where, prob- 
ably enough, he indulged in many collegian's freaks. This 
knack of bringing up a mere suspicion, is truly characteristic 
of the Oxford Don, and since the same Head of his House — 
Dr. Newton — acknowledged that Selwyn was, during his Ox- 
ford career, neither intemperate, dissolute, nor a gamester, it 
is fair to give him the advantage of the doubt, that the judg- 
ment on the evidence had been influenced by the considera- 
tion of *' suspicions" of former misdeeds, which had not been 



THE PROFESSION OF A WIT. 311 

proved, perhaps never committed. Knowing the after life of 
the man, we can scarcely doubt that George had led a fast life 
at the University, and given cause for mistrust. But one may 
ask whether Dons, whose love of drinking, and whose tenden- 
cy to jest on the most solemn subjects, are well known even 
in the present day, might not have treated Selwyn less harsh- 
ly for what was done under the influence of wine? To this 
we are inclined to reply, that no punishment is too severe for 
profanation ; and that drunkenness is not an excuse, but an 
aggravation. Selwyn threatened to appeal, and took advice 
on the matter. This, as usual, was vain. Many an expelled 
man, more unjustly treated than Selwyn, has talked of appeal 
in vain. Appeal to whom? to Avhat? Appeal against men 
who never acknowledge themselves wrong, and who, to main- 
tain that they are right, will listen to evidence which they can 
see is contradictory, and which they know to be worthless I 
An appeal from an Oxford decision is as hopeless in the pres- 
ent day as it was in Selwyn's. He wisely left it alone, but less 
wisely insisted on reappearing in Oxford, against the advice of 
all his friends, whose characters were lost if the ostracized man 
were seen among them. 

From this time he entered upon his "profession," that of a 
wit, gambler, club-lounger, and man about town ; for these 
many characters are all mixed in the one which is generally 
called " a wit." Let us remember that he was good-hearted, 
and not ill-intentioned, though imbued with the false ideas of 
his day. Pie was not a great man, but a great wit. 

The localities in which the trade of wit was plied were, then, 
the clubs, and the drawing-rooms of fashionable beauties. The 
former were in Selwyn's youth still limited in the number of 
their members, thirty constituting a large club ; and as the sub- 
scribers were all known to one another, presented an admirable 
field for display of mental powers in conversation. In fact, the 
early clubs were nothing more than dining-societies, precisely 
the same in theory as our breakfasting arrangements at Oxford, 
which were every whit as exclusive, though not balloted for. 
The ballot, however, and the principle of a single black ball suf- 
fering to negative an election, were not only, under such cir- 
cumstances, excusable, but even necessary for the actual pres- 
ervation of peace. Of course, in a succession of dinner-parties, 
if any two members were at all opposed to one another, the 
awkwardness would be intolerable. In the present day, two 
men may belong to the same club and scarcely meet, even on 
the stairs, oftener than once or twice in a season. 

Gradually, however, in the place of the "feast of reason and 
flow of soul" and wine, instead of the evenings spent in toast- 



312 THE THIKST FOR HAZARD. 

ing, talking, emptying bottles and filling heads, as in the case 
of the old Kit-kat, men took to the monstrous amusement of 
examining fate, and on club-tables the dice rattled far more 
freely than the glasses, though these latter were not necessa- 
rily abandoned. Then came the thirst for hazard that brought 
men early in the day to try their fortune, and thus made the 
club-room a lounge. Selwyn was an habitual frequenter of 
Brookes's. 

Brookes's was, perhaps, the principal club of the day, though 
" White's Chocolate House" was almost on a par with it. But 
Selwyn did not confine his attention solely to this club. It 
was the fashion to belong to as many of them as possible, and 
Wilberforce mentions no less than five to which he himself 
belonged : Brookes's, Boodle's, White's, Miles and Evans's in 
New Palace Yard, and Goosetree's. As their names imply, 
these were all, originally, mere coffee-houses, kept by men of 
the above names. One or two rooms then sufficed for the re- 
quirements of a small party, and it was not till the members 
were greatly increased that the coffee-house rose majestically 
to the dignity of a bow-window, and was entirely and exclu- 
sively appropriated to the requirements of the club. 

This was especially the case with White's, of which so many 
of the wits and talkers of Selwyn's day were members. Who 
does not know that bow-window at the top of St. James's Street, 
where there are sure, about three or four in the afternoon, to 
be at least three gentlemen, two old and one young, standing, 
to the exclusion of light within, talking and contemplating the 
oft-repeated movement outside. White's was established as 
early as 1698, and was thus one of the original coffee-houses. 
It was then kept by a man named Arthur : here Chesterfield 
gamed and talked, to be succeeded by Gilly Williams, Charles 
Townshend, and George Selwyn. The old house was burnt 
down in 1733. It was at White's — or as Hogarth calls it in 
his pictorial squib, Black's — that, when a man fell dead at the 
door, he was lugged in and bets made as to whether he was 
dead or no. The surgeon's operations were opposed, for fear 
of disturbing the bets. Here, too, did George Selwyn and 
Charles Townshend pit their wit against wit; and here Pel- 
ham passed all the time he was not forced to devote to poli- 
tics. In short it was, next to Brookes's, the club of the day, 
and perhaps in some respects had a greater renown than even 
that famous club, and its play was as high. 

In Brookes's and White's Selwyn appeared with a twofold 
fame, that of a pronouncer of bon-mots, and that of a lover of 
horrors. His wit was of the quaintest order. He was no 
inveterate talker, like Sydney Smith ; no clever dissimulator, 



reynolds's conversation-piece. 313 

like Mr. Hook. Calmly, almost sanctimoniously, lie uttered 
those neat and telling sayings which the next day passed over 
England as " Selwyn's last." Walpole describes his manner 
admirably — his eyes turned up, his mouth set primly, a look 
almost of melancholy in his whole face. Reynolds, in his 
Conversation-piece, celebrated when in the Strawberry Collec- 
tion, and representing Selwyn leaning on a chair, Gilly Wil- 
liams, crayon in hand, and Dick Edgecombe by his side, has 
caught the pseudo-solemn expression of his face admirably. 
The ease of the figure, one hand etrqiochee, the other holding 
a paper of epigrams, or what not, the huge waistcoat with a 
dozen buttons and huge flaps, the ruffled sleeve, the bob-wig, 
all belong to the outer man ; but the calm, quiet, almost in- 
quiring face, the look half of melancholy, half of reproach, and, 
as the Milesian would say, the other half of sleek wisdom ; the 
long nose, the prim mouth and joined lips, the elevated brow, 
and beneath it the quiet contemplative eye, contemplative not 
of heaven or hell, but of this world as it had seen it, in its most 
worldly point of view, yet twinkling with a flashing thought 
of incongruity made congruous, are the indices of the inner 
man. Most of our wits, it must have been seen, have had some 
other interest and occupation in life than that of "making 
wit :" some have been authors, some statesmen, some soldiers, 
some wildrakes, and some players of tricks: Selwyn had no 
profession but that of diseur de bons mots • for, though he 
sat in the House, he took no prominent part in politics ; though 
he gambled extensively, he did not game for the sake of mon- 
ey only. Thus his life was that merely of a London bachelor, 
with a few incidents to mark it, and therefore his memoir must 
resolve itself more or less into a series of anecdotes of his ec- 
centricities and list of his witticisms. 

His friend Walpole gives us an immense number of both, 
not all of a first-rate nature, nor many interesting in the present 
day- Selwyn, calm as he was, brought out his sayings on the 
spur of the moment, and their appropriateness to the occasion 
was one of their greatest recommendations. A good saying, 
like a good sermon, depends much on its delivery, and loses 
much in print. Nothing less immortal than wit! To take 
first, however, the eccentricities of his character, and especially 
his love of horrors, we find anecdotes by the dozen retailed of 
him. It was so well known, that Lord Holland, when dying, 
ordered his servant to be sure to "admit Mr. Selwyn if he called 
to inquire after him, "for if I am alive," said he, "I shall be 
glad to see him, and if I am dead, he will be glad to see me." 
The name of Holland leads us to an anecdote told by Walpole. 
Selwyn was looking over Cornbury with Lord Abergavennv 

O 



314: A MOST IMPORTANT COMMUNICATION. 

and Mrs. Frere, " who loved one another a little," and was dis- 
gusted with the frivolity of the woman who could take no in- 
terest in any thing worth seeing. " You don't know what 
you missed in the other room," he cried at last, peevishly. 
" Why, what ?" " Why, my Lord Holland's picture." " Well, 
what is my Lord Holland to me ?" " Don't you know ?" 
whispered the wit mysteriously, "that Lord Holland's body 
lies in the same vault in Kensington Church with my Lord 
Abergavenny's mother ?" " Lord ! she was so obliged," says 
Walpole, " and thanked him a thousand times !" 

Selwyn knew the vaults as thoroughly as old Anthony 
Wood knew the brasses. The elder Craggs had risen by the 
favor of Marlborough, whose footman he had been, and his son 
was eventually a Secretary of State. Arthur Moore, the fa- 
ther of James Moore Smyth, of whom Pope wrote — 

"Arthur, whose giddy son neglects the laws, 
Imputes to me and my damned works the cause," 

had worn a livery too. When Craggs got into a coach with 
him, he exclaimed, " Why, Arthur, I am always getting up 
behind, are not you ?" Walpole having related this story to 
Selwyn, the latter told him, as a most important communica- 
tion, that Arthur Moore had had his coffin chained to that of 
his mistress. " Lord ! how do you know ?" asked Horace. 
" Why, I saw them the other day in a vault at St. Giles's." 
"Oh, your servant, Mr. Selwyn," cried the man who showed 
the tombs at Westminster Abbey, " I expected to see you here 
the other day when the old Duke of Richmond's body was 
taken up." 

Criminals were, of course, included in his passion. Walpole 
affirms that he had a great share in bringing Lord Dacre's 
footman, who had murdered the butler, to confess his crime. 
In writing the confession, the ingenious plush coolly stopped 
and asked how "murder" was spelt. But it mattered little to 
George whether the criminal were alive or dead, and he de- 
fended his eccentric taste with his usual wit ; and when ral- 
lied by some women for going to see the Jacobite Lord Lovat's 
head cut off, he retorted sharply — " I made full amends, for I 
went to see it sewn on again." He had indeed done so, and 
given the company at the undertaker's a touch of his favorite 
blasphemy, for when the man of coffins had done his work, 
and laid the body in its box, Selwyn, imitating the voice of the 
Lord Chancellor at the trial, muttered, " My Lord Lovat, you 
may rise" He said a better thing on the trial of a confeder- 
ate of Lovat's, that Lord Kilmarnock, with whom the ladies 
fell so desperately in love as he stood on his defense. Mrs. 



AX AMATEUR HEADSMAN. 315 

Bethel, who was famous for a hatc/tet-face, was among the fair 
spectators : " What a shame it is," quoth the wit, " to turn 
her face to the prisoners before they are condemned !" Terri- 
ble, indeed, was that instrument to those men, who had in the 
heat of battle so gallantly met sword and blunderbuss. The 
slow, sure approach of the day of the scaffold was a thousand 
times worse than the roar of cannon. Lord Cromarty was 
pardoned, solely, it was said, from pity for his poor wife, who 
was at the time of the trial far advanced in pregnancy. It was 
affirmed that the child born had a distinct mark of an axe on 
his neck. Credrit Judceus ! Walpole used to say that Sel- 
wyn never thought but a la tete tranchee, and that when he 
went to have a tooth drawn, he told the dentist he would drop 
his handkerchief by way of signal. Certain it is that he did 
love an execution, whatever he or his friends may have done 
to remove the impression of this extraordinary taste. Some 
better men than Selwyn have had the same, and Macaulay ac- 
cuses Penn of a similar affection. The best-knowm anecdote 
of Selwyn's peculiarity relates to the execution of Damiens, 
who was torn with red-hot pincers, and finally quartered by 
four horses, for the attempt to assassinate Louis XV. On the 
day fixed, George mingled with the crowd plainly dressed, and 
managed to press forward close to the place of torture. The 
executioner observing him, eagerly cried out, " Faites place 
pour Monsieur ; c'est un Anglais et nn amateur; or, as an- 
other version goes, he was asked if he was not himself a bour- 
reau. " JVon, Monsieur" he is said to have answered, "je 
n-ai pas cet honneur; je ne sais qiCun amateur.'''' The story 
is more than apocryphal, for Selwyn is not the only person 
of whom it has been told ; and he was even accused, accord- 
ing to Wraxall, of going to executions in female costume. 
George Selwyn must have passed as a " remarkably fine wom- 
an," in that case. 

It is only justice to him to say that the many stories of his 
attending executions were supposed to be inventions of Sir 
Charles Ilanbury Williams, another wit, and of Chesterfield, 
another, and a rival. In confirmation, it is adduced that when 
the former had been relating some new account, and an old 
friend of Selwyn's expressed his surprise that he had never 
heard the tale before, the hero of it replied quietly, "No won- 
der at all, for Sir Charles has just invented it, and knows that 
I will not by contradiction spoil the pleasure of the company 
he is so highly entertaining." 

Wit has been called " the eloquence of indifference ;" no one 
seems ever to have been so indifferent about every thing but 
his little daughter, as George Selwyn. He always, however, 



316 THE ELOQUENCE OF INDIFFERENCE. 

took up the joke, and when asked why he had not been to see 
one Charles Fox, a low criminal, hanged at Tyburn, answer- 
ed, quietly, " I make a point of never going to rehearsals.' 1 '' 

Selwyn's love for this kind of thing, to believe his most inti- 
mate friend, Horace Walpole, was quite a fact. His friend 
relates that he even bargained for the High Sheriff's wand, 
after it was broken, at the condemnation of the gallant Lords, 
but said, " that he behaved so like an attorney the first day, 
and so like a pettifogger the second, that he would not take 
it to light his fire with." 

The State Trials, of course, interested George more than 
any other in his eventless life : he dined after the sentence 
with the celebrated Lady Townshend, who was so devoted to 
Lord Kilmarnock — 

" Pitied by gentle minds, Kilmarnock died" — Johnson. 

that she is said to have even staid under his windows, when 
he was in prison ; but he treated her anxiety with such light- 
ness that the lady burst into tears, and "flung up stairs." 
" George," writes Walpole to Montagu, " coolly took Mrs. 
Dorcas, her woman, and bade her sit down to finish the bot- 
tle. 'And pray,' said Dorcas, 'do you think my lady will 
be prevailed upon to let me go and see the execution ? I have 
a friend that has promised to take care of me, and I can lie in 
the Tower the night before.' Could she have talked more 
pleasantly to Selwyn ?" 

His contemporaries certainly believed in his love of N~ew- 
gatism ; for when Walpole had caught a housebreaker in a 
neighbor's area, he immediately dispatched a messenger to 
White's for the philo-criminalist, who was sure to be playing 
at the Club any time before daylight. It happened that the 
drawer at the "Chocolate-house" had been himself lately rob- 
bed, and therefore stole to George with fear and trembling, 
and muttered mysteriously to him, " Mr. Walpole's compli- 
ments, and he has got a housebreaker for you." Of course, 
Selwyn obeyed the summons readily, and the event concluded, 
as such events do nine times out of ten, with a quiet capture, 
and much ado about nothing. 

The Selwyns were a powerful family in Gloucestershire, 
owning a great deal of property in the neighborhood of Glou- 
cesteritself. The old colonel had represented that city in 
Parliament for many years. On the 5th of November, 1751, 
he died. His eldest son had gone a few months before him. 
This son had been also at Eton, and was an early friend of 
Horace Walpole and General Conway. His death left George 
sole heir to the property, and very much he seemed to have 
needed the heritage. 



THE FAMILY OF THE SELWYNS. 317 

The property of the Selwyns lay in the picturesque district 
of the Northern Cotswolds. Any body who has passed a day 
in the dull city of Gloucester, which seems to break into any 
thing like life only at an election, lying dormant in the inter- 
vals, has been glad to rush out to enjoy air and a fine view on 
Robin Hood's Hill, a favorite walk with the worthy citizens, 
though what the jovial archer of rnerry Sherwood had to do 
with it, or whether he was ever in Gloucestershire at all, I 
profess I know not. Walpole describes the hill with hu- 
morous exaggeration. " It is lofty enough for an alp, yet is 
a mountain of turf to the very top, has wood scattered all over 
it, springs that long to be cascades in many places of it, and 
from the summit it beats even Sir George Littleton's views, 
by having the city of Gloucester at its foot, and the Severn 
widening to the horizon." On the very summit of the next 
hill, Chosen-down, is a solitary church, and the legend saith 
that the good people who built it did so originally at the foot 
of the steep mount, but that the Virgin Mary carried up the 
stones by night, till the builder, in despair, was compelled to 
erect it on the top. Others attribute the mysterious act to a 
very different personage, and with apparently more reason, for 
the position of the church must keep many an old sinner from 
hearing service. 

At Matson, then, on Robin Hood's Hill, the Selwyns lived : 
"Walpole says that the " house is small, but neat. King Charles 
lay here at the siege, and the Duke of York, with typical fury, 
hacked and hewed the window-shutters of his chamber as a 
memorandum of his being there. And here is the very flower- 
pot and counterfeit association for which Bishop Sprat was 
taken up, and the Duke of Marlborough sent to the Tower. 
The reservoirs on the hill supply the city. The late Mr. Sel- 
wyn governed the borough by them — and I believe by some 
Avine too." Probably, or at least by some beer, if the modern 
electors be not much altered from their forefathers. 

Besides this important estate, the Selwyns had another at 
Ludgershall, and their influence there was so complete, that 
they might fairly be said to give one seat to any one they chose. 
With such double barrels George Selwyn was, of course, a 
great gun in the House, but his interest lay far more in piquet 
and pleasantry than in politics and patriotism, and he was 
never fired off with any but the blank cartridges of his two 
votes. His parliamentary career, begun in 1747, lasted more 
than forty years, yet was entirely without distinction. He, 
however, amused both parties with his wit, and by snoring in 
uniso7i with Lord North. This must have been trying to Mr. 
Speaker Cornwall, w r ho was longing, no doubt, to snore also, 



318 "the man of the people." 

and dared not. He was probably the only Speaker who pre- 
sided over so august an assembly as our English Parliament 
with a pewter pot of porter at his elbow, sending for more 
and more to Bellamy's, till his heavy eyes closed of themselves. 
A modern M. P., carried back by some fancies to " the Senate" 
of those days, might reasonably doubt whether his guide had 
not taken him by mistake to some Coal-hole or Cider-cellar, 
presided over by some former Baron Nicholson, and whether 
the furious eloquence of Messrs. Fox, Pitt, and Burke were not 
got up for the amusement of an audience admitted at sixpence 
a head. 

Selwyn's political jokes were the delight of Bellamy's. He 
said that Fox and Pitt reminded him of Hogarth's Idle and 
Industrious Apprentices. When asked by some one, as he 
sauntered out of the House — "Is the House up?" he replied, 
" No, but Burke is." The length of Burke's elaborate spoken 
essays was proverbial, and obtained for him the name of the 
" Dinner-bell." Fox was talking one day at Brookes's of the 
advantageous peace he had made with France, and that he 
had even induced that country to give up the gum trade to 
England. " That, Charles," quoth Selwyn, sharply, " I am not 
at all surprised at ; for having drawn your teeth, they would 
be d — d fools to quarrel with you about gums." Fox was 
often the object of his good-natured satire. As every one 
knows, his boast Avas to be called " The Man of the People," 
though perhaps he cared as little for the great unwashed as for 
the wealth and happiness of the waiters at his clubs. Every 
one knows, too, what a dissolute life he led for many years. 
In 1782, we are told by Walpole, he was "languishing at the 
feet" of the notorious and abandoned Mrs. Robinson. " Well," 
says Selwyn, calmly, " whom should ' The Man of the People' 
live with, but the woman of the peopled Selwyn's sleepiness 
was well known. He slept in the House ; he slept, after losing 
£800, " and with as many more before him," upon the gaming- 
table, with the dice-box " stamped close to his ears ;" he slept, 
or half slept, even in conversation, which he seems to have 
caught by fits and starts. Thus it was that words he heard 
suggested different senses, partly from being only dimly asso- 
ciated with the subject on the tapis. So, when they were 
talking around of the war, and whether it should be a sea-war 
or a Continental war, Selwyn woke up just enough to say, "I 
am for a sea-war and a Continent admiral." 

When Fox had ruined himself, and a subscription for him 
was talked of, some one asked how they thought "he would 
take it." " Take it," cried Selwyn, suddenly lighting up, " why, 
quarterly to be sure." 



TRUE WIT. 319 

His parliamentary career was then quite uneventful ; but at 
the dissolution in 1780, he found that his security at Glouces- 
ter was threatened. He was not Whig enough for that con- 
stituency, and had throughout supported the war with Amer- 
ica. He offered himself, of course, but was rejected with scorn, 
and forced to fly for a seat to Ludgershall. Walpole writes 
to Lady Ossory : " They" (the Gloucester people) " hanged him 
in effigy, and dressed up a figure of Mie-Mie" (his adopted 
daughter), "and pinned on its breast these words, alluding to 
the gallows: 'This is what I told you you would come to!'" 
From Gloucester he went to Ludgershall, where he was re- 
ceived by ringing of bells and bonfires. " Being driven out 
of my capital," said he, " and coming into that country of tur- 
nips, where I was adored, I seemed to be arrived in my Han- 
overian dominions" — no bad hit at George II. For Ludgers- 
hall he sat for many years, with Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, whose 
" Memoirs" are better known than trusted, as colleague. That 
writer says of him, that he was " thoroughly well versed in 
our history, and master of many curious as well as seoret 
anecdotes, relative to the houses of Stuart and Brunswick." 

Another bon-mot, not in. connection with politics, is reported 
by Walpole as " incomparable." Lord George Gordon asked 
him if the Ludgershall electors would take him (Lord George) 
for Ludgershall, adding, " if you would recommend me, they 
would choose me, if I came from the coast of Africa." " That 
is according to what part of the coast you came from ; they 
would certainly, if you came from the Guinea coast." " Now, 
Madam," writes his friend, "is not this true inspiration as well 
as true wit ? Had any one asked him in which of the four 
quarters of the world Guinea is situated, could he have told?" 
Walpole did not perhaps know Master George thoroughly — 
lie was neither so ignorant nor so indifferent as he seemed. 
His manner got him the character of being both ; but he was 
a still fool that ran deep. 

Though Selwyn did little with his two votes, he made them 
pay ; and in addition to the post in the Mint, got out of the 
party he supported those of Registrar to the Court of Chan- 
cery in the Island of Barbacloes, a sinecure done by deputy, 
Surveyor of the Crown Lands, and Paymaster to the Board 
of Works. The wits of White's added the title of " Receiver 
General of Waif and Stray Jokes." It is said that his hostili- 
ty to Sheridan arose from the latter having lost him the office 
in the Works in 1782, when Burke's Bill for reducing the Civil 
List came into operation ; but this is not at all probable, as his 
dislike was shown long before that period. Apropos of the 
Board of Works, Walpole gives another anecdote. On one 



320 SOME OF SBLWYN'S WITTY SAYINGS. 

occasion, in 1780, Lord George Gordon had been the only op- 
ponent on a division. Selwyn afterward took him in his car- 
riage to White's. " I have brought," said he, " the whole Op- 
position in my coach, and I hope one coach will always hold 
them, if they mean to take away the Board of Works." 

Undoubtedly, Selwyn's wit wanted the manner of the man 
to make it so popular, for, as we read it, it is often rather mild. 
To string a list of them together : 

Lady Coventry showed him her new dress all covered with 
spangles as large as shillings. "Bless my soul," said he, 
" you'll be change for a guinea." 

Fox, debtor and bankrupt as he w T as, had taken lodgings 
with Fitzpatrick at an oilman's, in Piccadilly. Every one 
pitied the landlord, who would certainly be ruined. " Not a 
bit of it," quoth George ; " he'll have the credit of keeping at 
his house the finest pickles in London." 

Sometimes there was a good touch of satire on his times. 
When " High Life Below Stairs" was first acted, Selwyn vow- 
ed he would go and see it, for he was sick of low life above 
stairs ; and when a w T aiter at his Club had been convicted of 
felony, " What a horrid idea," said he, " the man will give of 
us in Newgate !" 

Dining with Bruce, the Abyssinian traveler, he heard him 
say, in answer to a question about musical instruments in the 
East, " I believe I saw one lyre there." " Ay," whispered 
the wit to his neighbor, "and there's one less since he left the 
country." Bruce shared the travelers' reputation of drawing 
the long-bow to a very considerable extent. 

Two of Selwyn's best mots were about one of the Foley 
family, who were so deeply in debt that tlley had " to go to 
Texas," or Boulogne, to escape the money-lenders. "That," 
quoth Selwyn, "is a, pass-over wdiich will not be much relished 
by the Jews." Ancf again, when it w r as said that they would 
be able to cancel their father's old will by a new-found one, be 
profanely indulged in a pun far too impious to be repeated in 
our day, however it may have been relished in Selw r yn's time. 

A picture called "The Daughter of Pharaoh," in which the 
princess royal and her attendant ladies figured as the saver of 
Moses and her handmaids, was being exhibited in 1782, at a 
house opposite Brookes's, and was to be the companion-piece 
to Copley's " Death of Chatham." George said he could rec- 
ommend a better companion, to wit — the " Sons of Pharaoh" 
at the opposite house. It is scarcely necessary to explain that 
pharaoh or faro, was the most popular game of hazard then 
played. 

Walking one day with Lord Pembroke, and being besieged 




BEL.WVN ACKNOWLEDGES "TUE SOVEKEIGNTY OF TUE PEOPLE." 



THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PEOPLE. 323 

by a troop of small chimney-climbers, begging — Selwyn, after 
bearing their importunity very calmly for some time, suddenly 
turned round, and with the most serious face thus addressed 
them — " I have often heard of the sovereignty of the people ; 
I suppose your highnesses are in Court mourning." We can 
well imagine the eflect of this sedate speech on the astonished 
youngsters. 

Pelham's truculency was well known. Walpole and his 
friend went to the sale of his plate in 1755. "Lord," said the 
wit, "how many toads have been eaten off these plates!" 

The jokes were not always very delicate. When, in the 
middle of the summer of 1751, Lord North, who had been 
twice married before, espoused the widow of the Earl of 
Rockingham, who was fearfully stout, Selwyn suggested that 
she had been kept in ice for three days before the wedding. 
So, too, when there was talk of another embonpoint person- 
age going to America during the war, he remarked that she 
would make a capital breast-work. 

One of the few epigrams he ever wrote — if not the only one, 
of which there is some doubt — was in the same spirit. It is 
on the discovery of a pair of shoes in a certain lady's bed : 

"Well may Suspicion shake its head — 
Well may Clorinda's spouse he jealous, 
When the dear wanton takes to bed 

Her very shoes — because they're fellows.' 1 '' 

Such are a few specimens of George Selwyn's wit ; and doz- 
ens more are dispersed through Walpole's Letters. As Eliot 
Warburton remarks, they do not give us a very high idea of 
the humor of the period ; but two things must be taken into 
consideration before we deprecate their author's title to the 
dignity and reputation he enjoyed so abundantly among his 
contemporaries : they are not necessarily the best specimens 
that might have been given, if more of his mots had been 
preserved; and their effect on his listeners depended more 
on the manner of delivery than on the matter. That they 
were improvised and unpremeditated is another important 
consideration. It is quite unfair to compare them, as War- 
burton does, with the hebdomadal trash of "Punch," though 
perhaps they would stand the comparison pretty well. Itis 
one thing to force wit with plenty of time to invent and med- 
itate it — another to have so much wit within you that you can 
bring it out on any occasion ; one thing to compose a good fan- 
cy for money — another to utter it only when it flashes through 
the brain. 

But it matters little what we in the present clay may think 
of Selwyn's wit, for conversation is spoiled by bottling, and 



3-J4 selwyn's love foe children. 

should be drawn fresh when wanted. Selwyn's companions 
— all men of wit, more or less, affirmed him to be the most 
amusing man of his day, and that was all the part he had to 
play. No real wit ever hopes to talk for posterity ; and writ- 
ten wit is of a very different character to the more sparkling, 
if less solid, creations of a moment. 

We have seen Selwyn in many points of view, not all very 
creditable to him : first, expelled from Oxford for blasphemy ; 
next, a professed gambler and the associate of men who led 
fashion in those days, it is true, but then it was very bad 
fashion ; then as a lover of hangmen, a wit, and a lounger. 
There is reason to believe that Selwyn, though less openly 
reprobate than many of his associates, was, in his quiet way, 
just as bad as any of them, if we except the Duke of Queens- 
berry, his intimate friend, or the disgusting " Franciscans" of 
Medmenham Abbey, of whom, though not the founder, nor 
even a member, he was, in a manner, the suggester in his 
blasphemy. 

But Selwyn's real character is only seen in profile in all 
these accounts. He had at the bottom of such vice, to which 
lils position, and the fashion of the day introduced him, a far 
better heart than any of his contenqjoraries, and in some re- 
spects a kind of simplicity which was endearing. He was 
neither knave nor fool. He was not a voluptuary, like his 
friend the duke ; nor a continued drunkard, like many other 
" fine gentlemen" with whom he mixed ; nor a cheat, though 
a gambler ; nor a skeptic, like his friend Walpole ; nor a blas- 
phemer, like the Medmenham set, though he had once paro- 
died profanely a sacred rite ; nor was he steeped in debt, as 
Fox was ; nor does he appear to have been a practiced se- 
ducer, as too many of his acquaintance were. Not that these 
uegative qualities are to his praise ; but if Ave look at the age 
and the society around him, we must, at least, admit that Sel- 
wyn was not one of the worst of that wicked set. 

But the most pleasing point in the character of the old 
bachelor — for he was too much of a wit ever to marry — is his 
affection for children — not his own. That is, not avowedly 
his own, for it was often suspected that the little ones he took 
up so fondly bore some relationship to him, and there can be 
little doubt that Selwyn, like every body else in that evil age, 
had his intrigues. He did not die in his sins, and that is al- 
most all we can say for him. Pie gave up gaming in time, 
protesting that it was the bane of four much better things — 
health, money, time, and thinking. For the last two, per- 
haps, he cared little. Before his death he is said to have been 
a Christian, which was a decided rarity in the fashionable set 



MIE-M1E, THE LITTLE ITALIAN. "325 

of his day. Walpole answered, when asked if he was a Free- 
mason, that he never had been any thing, and probably most 
of the men of the time would, if they had had the honesty, 
have said the same. They were not atheists professedly, but 
they neither believed in nor practiced Christianity. 

His love for children has been called one of his eccentrici- 
ties. It would be a hard name to give it if he had not been a 
club-lounger of his day. I have sufficient faith in human na- 
ture to trust that two thirds of the men of this country have 
that most amiable eccentricity. But in Selwyn it amounted 
to something more than in the ordinary pater-familias : it was 
almost a passion. He was almost motherly in his celibate ten- 
derness to the little ones to whom he took a fancy. This af- 
fection he showed to several of the children, sons or daugh- 
ters, of his friends ; but to two especially, Anne Coventry and 
Maria Fagniani. 

The former was the daughter of the beautiful Maria Gun- 
ning, who became Countess of Coventry. Nanny, as he call- 
ed her, was four years old when her mother died, and from 
that time he treated her almost as his own child. 

But Mie-Mie, as the little Italian was called, was far more 
favored. No picture can better display the vice of the age 
than that of two men of the highest fashion, one of them the 
Duke of Queensberry, the greatest libertine and most disgust- 
ing profligate that ever disgraced the British peerage (which 
is saying much), vying for the honor of being the father of this 
poor little girl, while a reverend doctor attempted to decide 
the question, and advised one of them actually to marry her; 
and her own shameless mother encouraged each in his fancy, 
and alternately assured the one or the other that he was really 
its progenitor. The doubt of the paternity may afford a pleas- 
ant subject of investigation to certain precisionists of our day, 
but we beg to decline entering on such an inquiry. Whoever 
may have been the child's fa + her, her mother was a rather 
beautiful and very immoral woman, the wife of the Marchese 
Fagniani. She seems to have desired to make the most of 
her daughter out of the extraordinary rivalry of the two En- 
glish " gentlemen," and they were admirably taken in by her. 
Whatever the truth may have been, Selwyn's love for chil- 
dren showed itself more strongly in this case than in any oth- 
er ; and, oddly enough, it seems to have begun when the little 
girl was at an age when children scarcely interest other men 
than their fathers — in short, in infancy. Her parents allowed 
him to have the sole charge of her at a very early age, when 
they returned to the Continent; but in 17 7 7, the marchioness, 
being then in Brussels, claimed her daughter back again ; 



326 selwyn's little companion taken from him. 

though less, it seems, from any great anxiety on the child's ac- 
count, than because her husband's parents, in Milan, object- 
ed to their granddaughter being left in England ; and also, 
not a little, from fear of the voice of Mrs. Grundy. Selwyn 
seems to have used all kinds of arguments to retain the child ; 
and a long correspondence took place, which the marchesa be- 
gins with " My very dear friend," and many affectionate ex- 
pressions, and concludes with a haughty " Sir," and her opin- 
ion that his conduct was " devilish." The affair was, there- 
fore, cleai'ly a violent quarrel, and Selwyn was obliged at last 
to give up the child. He had a carriage fitted up for her ex- 
pressly for her journey ; made out for her a list of the best 
hotels on her route ; sent his own confidential man-servant 
with her, and treasured up among his " relics" the childish lit- 
tle notes, in a large scrawling hand, which Mie-Mie sent him. 
Still more curious was it to see this complete man of the world, 
this gambler for many years, this club-lounger, drinker, asso- 
ciate of well-dressed blasphemers, of Franciscans of Medmen- 
ham Abbey, of women of morals as loose as their jjetticoats, 
devoting, not his money only, but his very time to this mere 
child, leaving town in the height of the season for dull Matson, 
that she might have fresh air. Quitting his hot club-rooms, 
his nights spent at the piquet-table and the rattle of the dice, 
for the quiet, pleasant terraces of his country-house, where he 
would hold the little innocent Mie-Mie by her tiny hand, as 
she looked up into his shriveled dissipated face ; quitting the 
interchange of wit, the society of the Townshends, the Wal- 
poles, the Williamses, the Edgecumbes ; all the jovial, keen wis- 
dom of Gilly, and Dick, and Horace, and Charles, as they call- 
ed one another, for the meaningless prattle, the merry laugh- 
ter of this half-English, half-Italian child. It redeems Selwyn 
in our eyes, and it may have done him real good : nay, he must 
have felt a keen refreshment in this change from vice to inno- 
cence; and we understand the misery he expressed, when the 
old bachelor's one little companion and only pure friend was 
taken away from him. His love for the child was well known 
in London society ; and of it did Sheridan's friends take ad- 
vantage, when they wanted to get Selwyn out of Brookes's, 
to prevent his black-balling the dramatist. The anecdote is 
given in the next Memoir. 

In his later days Selwyn still haunted the clubs, hanging 
about, sleepy, shriveled, dilapidated in face and figure, yet 
still respected and dreaded by the youngsters, as the " cele- 
brated Mr. Selwyn." The wit's disease — gout — carried him 
off at last, in 1791, at the age of seventy-two. 
. He left a fortune which was not contemptible : £33,000 of' 



HIS LATER DAYS AND DEATH. 327 

it were to go to Mie-Mie — by this time a young lady — and as 
her "other papa," at his death, left her no less than =£150,000, 
Miss was by no means a bad match for Lord Yarmouth,* who 
was too little apprehensive on points of " legitimacy" to look 
closely into the doubt between Selwyn, Queensberry, and the 
marchese. See what a good thing it is to have three papas, 
when two of them are rich ! The duke made Lord Yarmouth 
his residuary legatee, and between him and his wife divided 
nearly half a million. 

People who pass by a certain house in Regent's Park have 
generally some scandalous tale to tell you of "the late mar- 
quis." The story of the marchioness's three papas is quite 
scandalous enough to make us think we have said enough, and 
had better close this sketch of George Selwyn — only remem- 
bering that, wit, gambler, drinker, profaner, club-lounger, gal- 
lows-lover, and worse, though he was, he had yet two points 
to redeem him from utter condemnation — a good heart and a 
fondness for children. 

* Afterward th% well-known and dissolute Marquis of Hertford. 



RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN. 

Poor Sherry ! poor Sherry ! drunkard, gambler, spendthrift, 
debtor, godless and worldly as thou wert, what is it that shakes 
from our hand the stone we would fling at thee ? Almost, we 
must confess it, thy very faults ; at least those qualities which 
seem to have been thy glory and thy ruin ; which brought 
thee into temptation ; to which, hadst thou been less brilliant, 
less bountiful, thou hadst never been drawn. What is it that 
disarms us when we review thy life, and wrings from us a tear 
when we should utter a reproach ? Thy punishment ; that 
bitter, miserable end ; that long battling with poverty, debt, 
disease, all brought on by thyself; that abandonment in the 
hour of need, more bitter than them all ; that awakening to 
the terrible truth of the hollowness of man and rottenness of 
the world ! surely this is enough : surely we may hope that a 
pardon followed. But now let us view thee in thy upward 
rliglit — the genius, the wit, the monarch of mind. 

This great man, this wonderful genius, this eloquent senator, 
this most applauded dramatist was — hear it, oh, ye boys ! and 
fling it triumphantly in the faces of your pedagogues — Sheridan, 
at your age, was a dunce ! This was the more extraordinary, 
inasmuchas his father, mother, and grandfather were all cele- 
brated for their quick mental powers. The last, in fact, Dr. 
Sheridan, was a successful and eminent schoolmaster, the inti- 
mate friend of Dean Swift, and an author. He was an Irish- 
man and a wit, and would seem to have been a Jacobite to 
boot, for he was deprived of a chaplaincy he held under Gov- 
ernment, for preaching, on King George's birthday, a sermon 
having for its text " Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof." 

Sheridan's mother, again — an eccentric, extraordinary wom- 
an — wrote novels and plays ; among the latter " The Discov- 
ery," which Garrick said was " one of the best comedies he 
ever read ;" and Sheridan's father, Tom Sheridan, was famous, 
in connection with the stage, where he was so long the rival 
of David Garrick. 

Born of such parents, in September, *1 751, Richard Brinsley 
Sheridan was sent in due course to Harrow, where that famous 
old pedant, Dr. Parr, was at that time one of the masters. The 
Doctor has himself described the lazy boy, in whose face he 
discovered the latent genius, and whom he attempted to in- 



330 BOYISH DREAMS OF LITERARY FAME. 

spire with a love of Greek verbs and Latin verses, by making 
him ashamed of his ignorance. But Richard preferred English 
verses and no verbs, and the Doctor failed. He did not, even 
at that period, cultivate elocution, of which his father was so 
good a master ; though Dr. Parr remembered one of Ins sis- 
ters, on a visit to Harrow, reciting, in accordance with her 
father's teaching, the well-known lines : 
"None but the brave, 
None but the brave, 
None but the brave deserve the fair." 
But the real mind of the boy who wouldn't be a scholar show- 
ed itself early enough. He had only just left Harrow, when 
he began to display his literary abilities. He had formed at 
school the intimate acquaintance of Halhed, afterward a distin- 
guished Indianist, a man of like tastes with himself; he had 
translated with him some of the poems of Theocritus. The 
two boys had reveled together in boyish dreams of literary 
fame — ah, those boyish dreams ! so often our noblest — so sel- 
dom realized. So often, alas ! the aspirations to which we can 
look back as our purest and best, and which make us bitterly 
regret that they were but dreams. And now, when young 
Halhed went to Oxford, and young Sheridan to join his family 
at Bath, they continued these ambitious projects for a time, 
and laid out their fancy at full usury over many a work des- 
tined never to see the fingers of the printer's devil. Among 
these was a farce, or rather burlesque, which shows immense 
promise, and which, oddly enough, resembles in its cast the - 
famous " Critic," which followed it later. It was called " Ju- 
piter," and turned chiefly on the story of Ixion — 

"Embracing cloud, Ixion like," 
the lover of Juno, who caught a cold instead of the Queen of 
Heaven ; and who, according to the classical legend, tortured 
forever on a wheel, was in this production to be condemned 
forever to trundle the machine of a " needy knife-grinder," 
amid a grand musical chorus of " razors, scissors, and pen- 
knives to grind !" This piece was amusing enough, and clever 
enough, though it betrayed repeatedly the youthfulness of its 
authors ; but less so their next attempt, a Aveekly periodical, to 
be called " Herman's Miscellany," of which Sheridan wrote, or 
was to write, pretty nearly the whole. None but the first 
number was ever completed, and perhaps we need not regret 
that no more followed it ; but it is touching to see these two 
young men, both feeling their powers, confident in them, and 
sunning their halcyon's wings in the happy belief that they 
were those of the eagle, longing eagerly, earnestly, for the few 
poor guineas that they hoped from their work. Halhed, in- 



SnERIDAN IN LOVE. 331 

deed, wrote diligently, but his colleague was not true to the 
contract, and though the hope of gold stimulated him — for he 
was poor enough — from time to time to a great effort, he was 
always " beginning," and never completing. 

The only real product of these united labors was a volume 
of Epistles in verse from the Greek of a poor writer of late 
age, Arista?netus. This volume, which does little credit to 
either of its parents, was positively printed and published in 
1770, but the rich harvest of fame and shillings which they ex- 
pected from it was never gathered in. Yet the book excited 
some little notice. The incognito of its authors induced some 
critics to palm it even on such a man as Dr. Johnson : .others 
praised ; others sneered at it. In the young men it raised 
hopes, only to dash them ; but its failure was not so utter as 
to put the idea of literary success entirely out of their heads, 
nor its success sufficient to induce them to rush recklessly into 
print, and thus strangle their fame in its cradle. Let it fail, 
was Richard Sheridan's thought ; he had now a far more en- 
grossing ambition. In a word, he was in love. 

Nonsense ! Sherry in love, the idea is preposterous. Sher- 
ry, the disreputable, the licentious, the " Bardolph," as he was 
afterward called, still more the Genius — was Genius ever in 
love? Yes, he was in love for a time — only for a time, and 
not truly. But, be it remembered, Sheridan's evil days had 
not commenced. He sowed his wild oats late in life — alack 
for him ! and he never finished sowing them. His was not the 
viciousness of nature, but the corruption of success. " In all 
time of wealth, good Lord deliver us !" What prayer can 
wild, unrestrained, unheeding Genius utter with more ferven- 
cy? I own Genius is rarely in love. There is an egotism, 
almost a selfishness, about it, that will not stoop to such com- 
mon worship. Women know it, and often prefer the blunt, 
honest, commonplace soldier to the wild erratic poet. Gen- 
ius, grand as it is, is unsympathetic. It demands higher — 
the highest joys. It will not smack its lips over a beefsteak. 
Its banquet may be the richest, just to be tasted ; or the poor- 
est, just to try hunger. Genius claims to be loved, but to love 
is too much to ask it. In very sooth, it is not more nor less 
than madness; and who ever saw a madman in love? Who 
ever knew a madman cherish even the commonest passion ? 
No, Genius is a disease, the mind overpowering the body. It 
is incapable of the honesty, despises the honor, of a pure love 
affair. And yet at this time Sheridan was not a matured Gen- 
ius. When his development came, he cast off this very love 
for which he had fought, manoeuvred, and struggled, and was 
unfaithful to the very wife whom he had nearly died to obtain. 



332 A NEST OF NIGHTINGALES. 

Miss Linley was one of a family who have been called " a 
nest of nightingales." Young ladies who practice elaborate 
pieces and sing simple ballads in the voice of a white mouse, 
know the name of Linley well. For ages the Linleys have 
been the bards of England — composers, musicians, singers, al- 
ways popular, always English. Sheridan's love was one of 
the most renowned of the family, but the " Maid of Bath," as 
she was called, was as celebrated for her beauty as for the 
magnificence of her voice. When Sheridan first knew her, 
she was only sixteen years old — very beautiful, clever, and 
modest, and — a flirt of the first water. She was a singer by 
profession, living at Bath, as Sheridan, only three years older 
than herself, also was, but attending concerts, oratorios, and 
so forth, in other places, especially at Oxford. Her adorers 
were legion ; and the Oxford boys especially — always in love 
as they are — were among them. Halhed was among these 
last, and in the innocence of his heart confided his passion to 
his friend Dick Sheridan. At sixteen the young beauty be- 
gan her conquests. A rich old Wiltshire squire, with a fine 
heart, as golden as his guineas, offered to or for her, and was 
readily accepted. But "Cecilia," as she was always called, 
could not sacrifice herself on the altar of duty, and she pri- 
vately told him, that though she honored and esteemed, she 
could never love him. The old gentleman proved his worth. 
Did he storm? did he hold her to her engagement? did he 
shackle himself with a young wife, who would only learn to 
hate him for his pertinacity? Not a bit of it. He acted with 
a generosity which should be held up as a model to all old 
gentlemen who are wild enough to fall in love with girls of 
sixteen. He knew Mr. Linley, who was delighted with the 
match, would be furious if it were broken off. He offered to 
take on himself all the blame of the breach, and, to satisfy the 
angry parent, settled £1000 on the daughter. The offer was 
accepted, and the trial for breach of promise with which the 
pere Linley had threatened Mr. Long, was of course withheld. 
Mr. Long afterward presented Mrs. Sheridan with £3000. 

The "Maid of Bath" was now an heiress as well as a fasci- 
nating beauty, but her face and her voice were the chief en- 
chantments with her ardent and youthful adorers. The Sher- 
idans had settled in Mead Street, in that town which is cele- 
brated for its gambling, its scandal, and its unhealthy situation 
at the bottom of a natural basin. Well might the swine of the 
Celtic shepherd discover its mineral waters ; it has been a ver- 
itable sty of vice and dirt since then. Well might the Romans 
build their baths there : it will take more water than even Bath 
supplies to wash out its follies and iniquities. It certainly is 



CAPTIVATED BY GENIUS. 333 

strange how washing and cards go together. One would fan- 
cy there were no baths in Eden, for wherever there are baths, 
there we find idleness and all its attendant vices. 

The Linleys were soon intimate with the Sheridans, and the 
Maid of Bath added to her adorers both Richard and his elder 
brother Charles ; only, just as at Harrow every one thought 
Richard a dunce, and he disappointed them; so at Bath no 
one thought Richard would fall in love, and he did disappoint 
them — none more so than Charles, his brother, and Halhed, 
his bosom friend. As for the latter, he was almost mad in his 
devotion, and certainly extravagant in his expressions. He de- 
scribed his passion by a clever, but rather disagreeable simile, 
which Sheridan, who was a most disgraceful plagiarist, though 
he had no need to be so, afterward adopted as his own. "Just 
as the Egyptian pharmacists," wrote Halhed, in a Latin letter, 
in which he described the power of Miss Linley's voice over 
his spirit, " were wont, in embalming a dead body, to draw the 
brain out through the ears with a crooked hook, this nightin- 
gale has drawn out through mine ears not my brain only, but 
my heart also." 

Then among other of her devotees were Xorris, the singer, 
and Mr. Watts, a rich gentleman-commoner, who had also met 
her at Oxford. Surely with such and other rivals, the chances 
of the quiet, unpretending, undemonstrative boy of nineteen 
were small. But no, Miss Linley was foolish enough to be 
captivated by genius, and charmed by such poems as the quiet 
boy wrote to her, of which this is, perhaps, one of the prettiest : 

"Dry that tear, my gentlest love; 
Be hush'd that struggling sigh, 
Nor seasons, day, nor fate shall prove 

More fix'd, more true than I. 
Hush'd be that sigh, be dry that tear; 
Cease boding doubt, cease anxious fear — 
Dry be that tear. 

" Ask'st thou how long my love will stay, 
When all that's new is past? 
How long, ah Delia, can I say 
How long my life will last ? 
Dry be that tear, be hush'd that sigh, 
At least I'll love thee till I die : 
Hush'd be that sigh. 

"And does that thought affect thee too, 
The thought of Sylvio's death, 
That he who only breath'd for you, 

Must yield that faithful breath? 
Hush'd be that sigh, be dry that tear, 
Nor let us lose our heaven here : 
Be dry that tear." 



334- siieeidan's elopement with "cecilia." 

The many adorers had not the remotest suspicion of this 
devotion, and "gave her" to this, that, or the other eligible 
personage ; but the villainous conduct of a scoundrel soon 
brought the matter to a crisis. The whole story was as ro- 
mantic- as it could be. In a three-volume novel, critics, always 
so just and acute in their judgment, woidd call it far-fetched, 
improbable, unnatural; in short, any thing but what should be 
the plot of the pure " domestic English story." Yet, here it 
is with almost dramatic effect, the simple tale of what really 
befell one of our most celebrated men. 

Yes, to complete the fiction-like aspect of the affair, there 
was even a " captain" in the matter — as good a villain as ever 
shone in short hose and cut doublet at the " Strand" or " Vic- 
toria." Captain Matthews was a married man, and a very 
naughty one. He was an intimate friend of the Linleys, and 
wanted to push his intimacy too far. In short, "not to put 
too fine a point on it" (too fine a point is precisely what never 
is put), he attempted to seduce the pretty, innocent girl, and 
not dismayed at one failure, went on again and again. " Ce- 
cilia," knowing the temper of Linley pere, was afraid to expose 
him to her father, and with a course, which we of the present 
day can not but think strange, if nothing more, disclosed the 
attempts of her persecutor to no other than her own lover, 
Richard Brinsley Sheridan. 

Strange want of delicacy, undoubtedly, and yet we can ex- 
cuse the poor songstress, with a father who sought only to 
make money out of her talents, and no other relations to con- 
fide in. But Richard Brinsley, long her lover, now resolved 
to be both her protector and her husband. He persuaded her 
to fly to France, under cover of entering a convent. He in- 
duced his sister to lend him money out of that provided for 
the housekeeping at home, hired a post-chaise, and sent a 
sedan-chair to her father's house in the Crescent to convey 
her to it, and wafted her off to town. Thence, after a few 
adroit lies on the part of Sheridan, they sailed to Dunkirk ; 
and there he persuaded her to become his wife. She consent- 
ed, and they were knotted together by an obliging priest ac- 
customed to these runaway matches*from laperfide Albion. 

The irate parent, Linley, followed, recaptured his daughter, 
and brought her back to England. Meanwhile, the elopement 
excited great agitation in the good city of Bath, and among 
others, the villain of the story, the gallant Captain Matthews, 
posted Richard Brinsley as " a scoundrel and a liar," the then 
polite method of expressing disgust. Home came Richard in 
the wake of Miss Linley, who rejoiced in the unromantic prae- 
nomen of " Betsy," and her angry parent, and found matters 



HIS DUEL WITH CAPTAIN MATTHEWS. 335 

had been running high in his short absence. A duel with 
Matthews seems to have been the natural consequence, and up 
Richard posted to London to fight it. Matthews played the 
craven — Sheridan the impetuous lover. They met, fought, 
seized one another's swords, wrestled, fell together, and wound- 
ed each other with the stumps of their rapiers in true Chevy- 
Chase fashion. Matthews, who had behaved in a cowardly 
manner in the first affair, sought to retrieve his honor by send- 
ing a second challenge. Again the rivals — well represented in 
"The Rivals'.' afterward produced — met at Kingsdown. Mr. 
Matthews drew ; Mr. Sheridan advanced on him at first ; Mr. 
Matthews in turn advanced fast on Mr. Sheridan ; upon which 
he retreated, till he very suddenly ran in upon Mr. Matthews, 
laying himself exceedingly open, and endeavoring to get hold 
of Mr. Matthews' sword. Mr. Matthews received him at point, 
and, I believe, disengaged his sword from Mr. Sheridan's body, 
and gave him another wound. The same scene was now enact- 
ed, and a combat a Voidranee took place, ending in mutual 
wounds, and fortunately no one dead. 

Poor little Betsy was at Oxford when all this took place. 
On her return to Bath she heard something of it, and uncon- 
sciously revealed the secret of her private marriage, claiming 
the right of a wife to watch over her wounded husband. Then 
came the denouement. Old Tom Sheridan rejected his son. 
The angry Linley would have rejected his daughter, but for 
her honor. Richard was sent oft' into Essex, and in due time 
the couple were legally married in England. So ended a wild, 
romantic affair, in which Sheridan took a desperate, but not 
altogether honorable, part. But the dramatist got more out 
of it than a pretty wife. Like all true geniuses, he employed 
his own experience in the production of his works, and drew 
from the very event of his life some hints or touches to enliven 
the characters of his imagination. Surely the bravado and 
cowardice of Captain Matthews, who on the first meeting in 
the Park is described as finding all kinds of difficulties in the 
way of their fighting, objecting now to the ground as unlevel, 
now to the presence of a stranger, who turns out to be an offi- 
cer, and very politely moves off when requested, who, in short, 
delays the event as long as possible, must have supplied the 
idea of Bob Acres; while the very conversations, of which we 
have no record, may have given him some of those hints of 
character which made "The Rivals" so successful. That play 
— his first — was written in 1774. It failed on its first appear- 
ance, owing to the bad acting of the part of Sir Lucius O'T rig- 
ger, by Mr. Lee ; but when another actor was substituted, the 
piece was at once successful, and acted with overflowing 



336 PAINFUL FAMILY ESTRANGEMENTS. 

houses all over the country. How could it be otherwise ? It 
may have been exaggerated, far-fetched, unnatural, but such 
characters as Sir Anthony Absolute, Sir Lucius, Bob Acre's, 
Lydia Languish, and most of all Mrs. Malaprop, so admirably 
conceived, and so carefully and ingeniously worked out, could 
not but be admired. They have become household words ; 
they are even now our standards of ridicule, and be they nat- 
ural or not, these last eighty years have changed the world so 
little that Malaprops and Acreses may be found in the range 
of almost any man's experience, and in every class of society. 

Sheridan and his divine Betsy were now living in their own 
house, in that dull little place, Orchard Street, Portman Square, 
then an aristocratic neighborhood, and he was diligent in the 
production of essays, pamphlets, and farces, many of which 
never saw the light, while others fell flat, or were not calcula- 
ted to bring him any fame. What great authors have not ex- 
perienced the same disappointments ? "What men would ever 
be great if they allowed such checks to damp their energy, or 
were turned back by them from the course in which they feel 
that their power lies? 

But his next work, the opera of " The Duenna," had a yet 
more signal success, and a run of no less than seventy-five 
nights at Covent Garden, wdiich put Garrick at Drury Lane 
to his wit's end to know how t-o compete with it. Old Linley 
himself composed the music for it ; and to show how thus a 
family could hold the stage, Garrick actually played off the 
mother against the son, and revived Mrs. Sheridan's comedy 
of "The Discoveiy," to compete with Richard Sheridan's 
" Duenna." 

The first night "The Rivals" was brought out at Bath came 
Sheridan's father, who, as we have seen, had refused to have 
any thing to say to his son. It is related, as an instance of 
Richard's filial affection, that during the representation he 
placed himself behind a side scene opposite to the box in 
which his father and sisters sat, and gazed at them all the 
time. When he returned to his house and wife, he burst into 
tears, and declared that he felt it too bitter that he alone 
should have been forbidden to speak to those on whom he had 
been gazing all the night. 

In the following year this man of straw, w T ho married on 
nothing but his brain, and had no capital, no wealthy friends, 
in short nothing whatever, suddenly appears in the most mys- 
terious manner as a capitalist, # and lays down his £10,000 in 
the coolest and quietest manner. And for what ? For a share 
in the purchase of Garrick's moiety of the patent of Drury 
Lane. The whole property was worth £70,000 ; Garrick sold 



ENTERS DRURY LANE. 337 

his half for £35,000, of which old Mr. Linley contributed 
£10,000, Doctor Ford £15,000, and penniless Sheridan the bal- 
ance. Where he got the money nobody knew, and apparently 
nobody asked. It was paid, and he entered at once on the 
business of proprietor of that old house, where so many a 
Roscius has strutted and declaimed with more or less fame; 
so many a walking gentleman done his five shillings' worth of 
polite comedy, so many a tinsel king degraded the " legitimate 
drama" in the most illegitimate manner, and whose glories 
were extinguished with the reign of Macready, when we were 
boys, nous metres. 

The first piece he contributed to this stage was "A Trip to 
Scarborough," which was only a species of " family edition" 
of Vanbrugh's obscene play, "The Relapse;" but in 1777 he 
reached the acme of his fame, in " The School for Scandal." 

But alack and alas for these sensual days, when it is too 
much trouble to think, and people go to the play, if they go 
at all, to feast their eyes and ears, not their minds, to gaze, 
like clods, on a tinsel pageant of Mr. Charles Kean's, or, like 
a dull eastern prince, on the meretricious attitudes of half- 
clothed ballet-girls ; nay, worse, to listen to the noise and clat- 
ter of Verdi or Balfe, and impudently call it music ; to songs 
in a language they can not understand ; and ridiculous rant- 
ing, to which they are not ashamed to give the name of acting. 
Can any sensible person believe that if "The School for Scan- 
dal," teeming as it does with wit, satire, and character, finer 
and truer than in any play produced since the days of Ben 
Jonson, Massinger, and Marlowe, were set on the boards of 
the Haymarket at this day, as a new piece by an author of no 
very high celebrity, it would draw away a single admirer from 
the flummery in Oxford Street, the squeaking at Covent Gar- 
den, or the broad, exaggerated farce at the Adelphi or Olym- 
pic ? No : it may still have its place on the London stage 
when well acted, but it owes that to its ancient celebrity, and 
it can never compete with the tinsel and tailoring which alone 
can make even Shakspeare go down with a modern audience. 

In those days of Garrick, on the other hand, those glorious 
days of true histrionic art, high and low were not ashamed to 
throng Drury Lane and Covent Garden, and make the appear- 
ance of a new play the great event of the season. Plundreds 
were turned away from the doors, when the "School for Scan- 
dal" was acted, and those who were fortunate enough to get 
in made the piece the subject of conversation in society for 
many a night, passing keen comment on every scene, every 
line, every word almost, and using their minds as we now use 
our eves. 

P 



338 OPINIONS OF SHERIDAN" AND HIS INFLUENCE. 

This brilliant play, the earliest idea of which was derived 
from its author's experience of the gossip of that kettle of scan- 
dal and backbiting, Bath, where if no other commandment 
were ever broken, the constant breach of the ninth would suf- 
fice to put it on a level with certain condemned cities we have 
somewhere read of, won for Sheridan a reputation of which he 
at once felt the value, and made his purchase of a share in the 
property of Old Drury for the time being a successful specula- 
tion. It produced a result which his good heart perhaps 
valued even more than the guineas which now flowed in ; it 
induced his father, who had long been at war with him, to 
seek a reconciliation, and the elder Sheridan actually became 
manager of the theatre of .which his son. was part proprietor. 

Old Tom Sheridan had always been a proud man, and when 
once he was offended, was hard to bring round again. His 
quarrel with Johnson was an instance of this. In 1762 the 
Doctor hearing they had given Sheridan a pension of two hund- 
red a year, exclaimed, " What, have they given him a pen- 
sion ? then it is time for me to give up mine." A "kind friend" 
took care to repeat the peevish exclamation, without adding 
what Johnson had said immediately afterward, " However, I 
am glad that they have given Mr. Sheridan a pension, for he 
is a very good man." The actor was disgusted ; and though 
Boswell interfered, declined to be reconciled. On one occa- 
sion he even rushed from a house at which he was to dine, 
when he heard that the great Samuel had been invited. The 
Doctor had little opinion of Sheridan's declamation. "Be- 
sides, sir," said he, "what influence can Mr. Sheridan have upon 
the language of this great country by his narrow exertions ? 
Sir, it is burning a farthing candle at Dover to show light at 
Calais." Still, when Garrick attacked his rival, Johnson nobly 
defended him. " No, sir," he said, " there is to be sure, in 
Sheridan, something to reprehend, and every thing to laugh 
at ; but, sir, he is not a bad man. No, sir ; were mankind to 
be divided into good and bad, he would stand considerably 
within the ranks of the good." 

However, the greatest bully of his age (and the kindest- 
hearted man) thought very differently of the son. Richard 
Brinsley had written a prologue to Savage's play of "Sir 
Thomas Overbury" — 

"Ill-fated Savage, at whose birth was giv'n 
No parent but the muse, no friend but Heav'n ;" 

and in this had paid an elegant compliment to the great lexi- 
cographer, winding up with these lines : 

"So pleads the tale that gives to future times 
The son's misfortunes and the parent's crimes : 



THE LITERARY CLUB. 341 

There shall his fame, if own'd to-night, survive, 
Fix'd by the hand that bids our language live — " 

referring at once to Johnson's life of his friend Savage and to 
his great Dictionary. It was Savage, you remember, with 
whom Johnson in his days of starvation was wont to walk the 
streets all night, neither of them being able to pay for a lodg- 
ing, and with whom, walking one night round and round St. 
James's Square, he kept up his own and his companion's spirits 
by inveighing against the minister, and declaring that they 
would " stand by their country." 

Doubtless the Doctor felt as much pleasure at the meed 
awarded to his old companion in misery as at the high com- 
pliment to himself. Anyhow he pronounced that Sheridan 
" had written the two best comedies of his age," and therefore 
proposed him as a member of the Literary Club. 

This celebrated gathering of wit and whimsicality, founded 
by Johnson himself in conjunction with Sir J. Reynolds, was 
the Helicon of ^London Letters, and the temple which the 
greatest talker of his age had built for himself, and in which 
he took care to be duly worshiped. It met at the Turk's 
Head in Gerrald Street, Soho, every Friday ; and from seven 
in the evening to almost any hour of night was the scene 
of such talk, mainly on literature and learning, as has never 
been heard since in this country. It consisted at this period 
of twenty-six members, and there is scarcely one among them 
whose name is not known to-day as well as any in the history 
of our literature. Besides the high-priests, Reynolds and John- 
son, there came Edmund Burke, Fox, Sheridan, and many an- 
other of less note, to represent the senate : Goldsmith, Gib- 
bon, Adam Smith, Malone, Dr. Burney, Percy, Nugent, Sir 
William Jones, three Irish bishops, and a host of others, 
crowded in from the ranks of learning and literature. Gar- 
rick and George Colman found here an indulgent audience ; 
and the light portion of the company comprised such men as 
Topham Beauclerk, Bennet Langton, Vesey, and a dozen of 
lords and baronets. In short, they were picked men, and if 
their conversation was not always witty, it was because they 
had all wit, and frightened one another. 

Among them the bullying Doctor rolled in majestic grum- 
piness ; scolded, dogmatized, contradicted, pished and pshaw- 
ed, and made himself generally disagreeable; yet, hail the 
omen, Intellect! such was the force, such the fame of his 
mind, that the more he snorted, the more they adored him — 
the more he bullied, the more humbly they knocked under. 
He was quite " His Majesty" at the Turk's Head, and the 
courtiers waited for his coming with anxiety, and talked of 



342 ANECDOTE OF GAKKICK. S ADMITTANCE. 

him till he came in the same manner as the lackeys in the 
anteroom of a crowded monarch. Boswell, who, by the way, 
was also a member — of course he was, or how should we have 
had the great man's conversations handed down to us ? — was 
sure to keep them up to the proper mark of adulation if they 
ever flagged in it, and Avas as servile in his admiration in the 
Doctor's absence as when he was there to call him a fool for 
his pains. 

Thus, on one occasion while " King Johnson" tarried, the 
courtiers were discussing his journey to the Hebrides and his 
.coming away "willing to believe the second sight." Some of 
them smiled at this, but Bozzy was down on them with more 
than usual servility. " He is only toilling to believe," he ex- 
claimed. "Z do believe. The evidence is enough for me, 
though not for his great mind. What will not lill a quart 
bottle will fill a pint bottle. I am filled with belief." "Are 
you ?" said Colman, slyly ; " then cork it up." 

As a specimen of Johnson's pride in his own club, which 
always remained extremely exclusive, we have what he said 
of Garrick, who, before he was elected, carelessly told Rey- 
nolds he liked the club, and "thought he would be of them." 

" He'll be of us!" roared the Doctor indignantly, on hearing 
of this. "How does he know we wHB. permit him? The first 
duke in England has no right to hold such language !" 

It can easily be imagined that when " His Majesty" ex- 
pressed his approval of Richard Brinsley, then a young man 
of eight-and-twenty, there was no one who ventured to black- 
ball him, and so Sheridan was duly elected. 

The fame of "The School for Scandal" was a substantial 
one for Richard Brinsley, and in the following year he ex- 
tended his speculation by buying the other moiety of Drury 
Lane. This theatre, which took its name from the old Cock- 
pit Theatre in Drury Lane, where Killigrew acted in the days 
of Charles II., is famous for the number of times it has been 
rebuilt. The first house had been destroyed in 1674; and 
the one in which Garrick acted was built by Sir Christopher 
Wren, and opened with a prologue by Dryden. In 1793 this 
was rebuilt. In 1809 it was burnt to the ground; and on its 
reopening the Committee advertised a prize for a prologue, 
which was supposed to be tried for by all the poets and poet- 
asters then in England.* Horace Smith and his brother seized 
the opportunity to parody the style of the most celebrated in 
their delightful "Rejected Addresses." Drury Lane has al- 
ways been grand in its prologue, for besides Dryden and 

* None of the addresses sent in having given satisfaction, Lord Byron was 
requested to write one, which he did. 



NEW FLIGHTS. POLITICAL AMBITION. 343 

Byron, it could boast of Sam. Johnson, who wrote the address 
when Garrick opened the theatre in 1747. No theatre ever 
had more great names connected with its history. 

It was in 1778, after the purchase of the other moiety of 
this property, that Sheridan set on its boards " The Critic." 
Though this was denounced as itself as complete a plagiarism 
as any Sir Fretful Plagiary could make, and though undoubt- 
edly the idea of it was borrowed, its wit, so truly Sheridanian, 
and its complete characters, enhanced its author's fame, in 
spite of the disappointment of those who expected higher 
things from the writer of " The School for Scandal." Whether 
Sheridan would have gone on improving, had he remained true 
to the drama, " The Critic" leaves us in doubt. But he was a 
man of higher ambition. Step by step, unexpectedly, ami 
apparently unprepared, he had taken by storm the outworks 
of the citadel he was determined to capture, and he seems to 
have cared little to garrison these minor fortresses. He had 
carried oil* from among a dozen suitors a wife of such beauty 
that Walpole thus writes of her in 1773 : 

" I was at the ball last night, and have only been at the 
opera, where I Avas infinitely struck with the Carrara, who is 
the prettiest creature upon earth. Mrs. Hartly I find still 
handsomer, and Miss Linley is to be the superlative degree. 
The king admires the last, and ogles her as much as he dares 
in so holy a place as an oratorio, and at so devout a service as 
Alexander's Feast." 

Yet Sheridan «did not prize Betsy as he should have done, 
when he had once obtained her. Again he had struck boldly 
into the drama, and in four years had achieved that fame as a 
play-writer to which even Johnson could testify so handsomely. 
He now quitted this, and with the same innate power — the 
same consciousness of success — the same readiness of genius — 
took a higher, far more brilliant flight than ever. Yet had he 
garrisoned the forts he captured, he would have been a better, 
happier, and more prosperous man. Had he been true to the 
Maid of Bath, his character would not have degenerated as it 
did. Had he kept up his connection with the drama, he would 
not have lost so largely by his speculation in Drury Lane. 
His genius became his temptation, and he hurried on to tri- 
umph and to fall. 

Public praise is a siren which the young sailor through life 
can not resist. Political life is a fine aim, even when its seeker 
starts without a shred of real patriotism to conceal his personal 
ambition. No young man of any character can think, without 
a thrill of rapture, on the glory of having his name — now ob- 
scure — written in capitals on the page of his country's history. 



344 THE GAMING MANIA. 

A true patriot cares nothing for fame ; a really great man 
is content to die nameless, if his acts may but survive him. 
Sheridan was not really great, and it may be doubted if he 
had any sincerity in his political views. But the period favor- 
ed the rise of young men of genius. In former reigns a man 
could have little hope of political influence without being first 
a courtier ; but by this time liberalism had made giant strides. 
The leaven of revolutionary ideas, which had leavened the 
whole lump in France, was still working quietly and less pas- 
sionately in this country, and being less repressed, displayed 
itself in the last quarter of the eighteenth century in the form 
of a strong and brilliant opposition. It was to this that the 
young men of ambition attached themselves, rallying under 
the standard of Charles James Fox, since it was there only 
that their talents were sufficient to recommend them. 

To this party, Sheridan, laughing in his sleeve at the extrav- 
agance of their demands — so that when they clamored for a 
" parliament once a year, or oftener if need be," he pronounced 
himself an " Oftener-if-need-be" man — was introduced, when 
his fame as a literary man had brought him into contact with 
some of its hangers-on. Fox, after his first interview with 
him, affirmed that he had always thought Hare and Chai'les 
Townsend the wittiest men he had ever met, but that Sheridan 
surpassed them both ; and Sheridan was equally pleased with 
"the Man of the People." 

The first step to this political position was to become a 
member of a certain club, where its leaders gambled away 
their money, and drank away their minds — -to wit, Brookes's. 
Pretty boys, indeed, were these great Whig patriots when 
turned loose in these precincts. The tables were for stakes 
of twenty or fifty guineas, but soon ran up to hundreds. What 
did it matter to Charles James Fox, to the Man of the People, 
whether he lost five, seven, or ten thousand of a night, when 
the one half came out of his father's, the other out of Hebrew, 
pockets — the sleek, thick-lipped owners of which thronged his 
Jerusalem chamber, as he called his back sitting-room, only too 
glad to " oblige" him to any amount ? The rage for gaming 
at this pandemonium may be understood from a rule of the 
club, which it was found necessary to make to interdict it in 
the eating-room, but to which was added the truly British ex- 
ception, which allowed two members of Parliament in those 
days, or two " gentlemen" of any kind, to toss tip for what 
they had ordered. 

This charming resort of the dissipated was originally estab- 
lished in Pall Mall in 1764, and the manager was that same 
Almack who afterward opened .a lady's club in the rooms now 



AEMACK.'s. BEOOKES's. 345 

called Willis's, in King Street, St. James's ; who also owned the 
famous Thatched House, and whom Gilly Williams described 
as having a " Scotch face, in a bag-wig," waiting on the ladies 
at supper. In 1778 Brookes — a wine-merchant and money- 
lender, whom Tickell, in his famous " Epistle from the Hon. 
Charles Fox, partridge-shooting, to the Hon. John Townsend, 
cruising," describes in these lines : 

"And know I've bought the best champagne from Brookes, 
From liberal Brookes, whose speculative skill 
Is hasty credit, and a distant bill : 
Who, nurs'd in clubs, disdains a vulgar trade ; 
Exults to trust, and blushes to be paid" — 

built and opened the present club-house in St. James's Street, 
and thither the members of Almack's migrated. Brookes's 
speculative skill, however, did uot make him a rich man, and 
the " gentlemen" he dealt with were perhaps too gentlemanly 
to pay him. He died poor in 1782. Almack's at first con- 
sisted of twenty-seven members, one of whom was C. J. Fox. 
Gibbon, the historian, was actually a member of it, and says 
that in spite of the rage for play, he found the society there 
rational and entertaining. Sir Joshua Reynolds wanted to 
be a member of it too. " You see," says Topham Beauclerk 
thereupon, " what noble ambition will make a man attempt. 
That den is not yet opened," etc. 

Brookes's, however, was far more celebrated, and besides 
Fox, Reynolds, and Gibbon, there were here to be found 
Horace Walpole, David Hume, Burke, Selvvyn, and Garrick. 
It would be curious to discover how much religion, how much 
morality, and how much vanity there were among the set. 
The first two would require a microscope to examine, the last 
an ocean to contain it. But let Tickell describe its inmates : 

"Soon as to Brookes's thence thy footsteps bend, 
What gratulations thy approach attend ! 
See Gibbon rap his box — auspicious sign, 
That classic compliment and wit combine ; 
See Beauclerk's cheek a tinge of red surprise, 
And friendship give what cruel health denies ; 
* * * * 

Of wit, of taste, of fancy we'll debate, 
If Sheridan for once be not too late. 
But scarce a thought on politics we'll spare, 
Unless on Polish politics with Hare. 
Good-natured Devon ! oft shall there appear 
The cool complacence of thy friendly sneer ; 
Oft shall Fitzpatrick's wit, and Stanhope's ease, 
And Burgoyne's manly sense combine to please.'' 

To show how high gaming ran in this assembly of wits, even 
so early as 1772, there is a memorandum in the books, stating 

P 2 



:J46 TWO VERSIONS OF THE ELECTION TRICK. 

that Mr. Thyrme retired from the club in disgust, because he 
had only won £12,000 in two months. The principal games 
at this period were quinze and faro. 

Into this eligible club Richard Sheridan, who ten years be- 
fore had been agreeing with Halhed on the bliss of making a 
couple of hundred pounds by their literary exertions, now es- 
sayed to enter as a member ; but in vain. One black ball suf- 
ficed to nullify his election, and that one was dropped in by 
George Selwyn, who would not have the son of an actor 
among them. Again and again he made the attempt ; again 
and again Selwyn foiled him ; and it was not till 1780 that he 
succeeded. The Prince of Wales was then his devoted friend, 
and was determined he should be admitted into the club. The 
elections at that time took place between eleven at night and 
one o'clock in the morning, and the " greatest gentleman in 
Europe" took care to be in the hall when the ballot began. 
Selwyn came down as usual, bent on triumph. The prince 
called him to him. There was nothing for it ; Selwyn was 
forced to obey. The prince walked him up and down the 
hall, engaging him in an apparently most important conversa- 
tion. George Sehvyn answered him question after question, 
and made desperate attempts to slip away. The other George 
had always something more to say to him. The long finger 
of the clock went round, and Selwyn's long white fingers were 
itching for the black ball. The prince was only more and more 
interested, the wit only more and more abstracted. Never was 
the one George more lively, or the other more silent. But it 
was all in vain. The finger of the clock went round and round, 
and at last the members came out noisily from the balloting- 
room, and the smiling faces of the prince's friends showed to 
the unhappy Selwyn that his enemy had been elected. 

So, at least, runs one stoi-y. The other, told by Sir Nathan- 
iel Wraxall, is perhaps more probable. It appears that the 
Earl of Besborough was no less opposed to his election than 
George Selwyn, and these two individuals agreed at any cost 
of comfort to be always at the club at the time of the ballot 
to throw in their black balls. On the night of his success, 
Lord Besborough was there as usual, and Selwyn was at his 
rooms in Cleveland Row, preparing to come to the club. Sud- 
denly a chairman rushed into Brookes's with an important note 
for my lord, who, on tearing it open, found to his horror that 
it was from his daughter-in-law, Lady Duncannon, announcing 
that his house in Cavendish Square was on fire, and imploring 
him to come immediately. Feeling confident that his fellow- 
conspirator would be true to his post, the earl set off at once. 
But almost the same moment Selwyn received a messasre in- 



st. Stephen's won. — vocal difficulties. 347 

forming him that his adopted daughter, of whom he was very- 
fond, was seized with an alarming illness. The ground was 
cleared ; and by the time the earl returned, having, it is need- 
less to say, found his house in a perfect state of security, and 
was joined by Selwyn, whose daughter had never been better 
in her life, the actor's son was elected, and the conspirators 
found they had been duped. 

But it is far easier in this country to get into that House, 
where one has to represent the interests of thousands, and 
take a share in the government of a nation, than to be admit- 
ted to a club where one has but to lounge, to gamble, and to 
eat dinner ; and Sheridan was elected for the town of Stafford 
with probably little more artifice than the old and stale one 
of putting five-pound notes under voters' glasses, or paying- 
thirty pounds for a home-cured ham. Whether he bribed or 
not, a petition was presented against his election, almost as a 
matter of course in those days, and his maiden speech was 
made in defense of the good burgesses of that quiet little 
county-town. After making this speech, which was listened 
to in silence on account of his reputation as a dramatic author, 
but does not appear to have been very wonderful, he rushed 
up to the gallery, and eagerly asked his friend Woodfall what 
he thought of it. That candid man shook his head, and told 
him oratory was not his forte. Sheridan leaned his head on 
his hand a moment, and then exclaimed with vehement em- 
phasis, " It is in me, however, and, by Heaven ! it shall come 
out." 

He spoke prophetically, yet not as the great man who de- 
termines to conquer difficulties, but rather as one who feels 
conscious of his own powers, and knows that they must show 
themselves sooner or later. Sheridan found himself laboring 
under the same natural obstacles as Demosthenes — though in 
a less degree — a thick and disagreeable tone of voice ; but we 
do not find in the indolent but gifted Englishman that admi- 
rable perseverance, that conquering zeal, which enabled the 
Athenian to turn these very impediments to his own advan- 
tage. He did, indeed, prepare his speeches, and at times had 
fits of that same diligence which he had displayed in the prep- 
aration of " The School for Scandal ;" but his indolent, self- 
indulgent mode of life left him no time for such steady devo- 
tion to oratory as might have made him the finest speaker of 
his age, for perhaps his natural abilities were greater than 
those of Pitt, Fox, or even Burke, though his education was 
inferior to that of those two statesmen. 

From this time Sheridan's life had two phases — that of a 
politician, and that of a man of the woi-ld. With the former 



348 SHERIDAN AS A WIT. 

we have nothing to do in such a memoir as this, and indeed 
it is difficult to say whether it was in oratory, the drama, or 
wit that he gained the greatest celebrity. There is, however, 
some difference between the three capacities. On the mimic 
stage, and on the stage of the country, his fame rested on a 
very few grand outbursts — some matured, prepared, delibera- 
ted — others spontaneous. He left only three great comedies, 
and perhaps we may say only one really grand. In the same 
way he made only two great speeches, or perhaps we may say 
only one. His wit, on the other hand — though that too is 
said to have been studied — was the constant accompaniment 
of his daily life, and Sheridan has not left two or three cele- 
brated bon-mots, but a hundred. 

But even in his political career his wit, which must then 
have been spontaneous, won him almost as much fame as his 
eloquence, which he seems to have reserved for great occa- 
sions. He was the wit of the House. Wit, ridicule, satire, 
quiet, cool, and easy sneers, always made in good temper, and 
always therefore the more bitter, were his weapons, and they 
struck with unerring accuracy. At that time — nor at that 
time only — the " Den of Thieves," as Cobbett called our sen- 
ate, was a cockpit as vulgar and personal as the present Con- 
gress of the United States. Party spirit meant more than it 
has ever done since, and scarcely less than it had meant when 
the throne itself was the stake for which parties played some 
forty years before. There was, in fact, a substantial personal 
centre for each side. The one party rallied round a respecta- 
ble but maniac monarch, whose mental afflictions took the most 
distressing form, the other round his gay, handsome, dissolute 
— nay disgusting — son, at once his rival and his heir. The 
spirit of each party was therefore personal, and their attacks 
on one another were more personal than any thing we can im- 
agine in the present day in so respectably ridiculous a conclave 
as the House of Commons. It was little for one honorable 
gentleman to give another honorable gentleman the lie direct 
before the eyes of the country. The honorable gentlemen de- 
scended — or, as they thought, ascended — to the most vehe- 
ment invective, and such was at times the torrent of personal 
abuse which parties heaped on one another, while good-natured 
John Bull looked on and smiled at his rulers, that, as in the 
United States of to-day, a debate was often the prelude to a 
duel. Pitt and Fox, Tierney, Adam, Fullarton, Lord George 
Germain, Lord Shelburne, and Governor Johnstone, all "vin- 
dicated their honor," as the phrase went, by " coffee and pis- 
tols for four." If Sheridan had not to repeat the Bob Acres 
scene with Captain Matthews, it was only because his wonder- 



pitt's vulgar attack. 349 

ful good-humor could put up with a great deal that others 
thought could only be expiated by a hole in the waistcoat. 

In the administration of the Marquis of Rockingham the 
dramatist enjoyed the pleasures of office for less than a year 
as one of the Under Secretaries of State in 1782. In the next 
year Ave find him making a happy retort on Pitt, who had 
somewhat vulgarly alluded to his being a dramatic author. It 
was on the American question, perhaps the bitterest that ever 
called forth the acrimony of parties in the House. Sheridan, 
from boyhood, had been taunted with being the son of an actor. 
He had been called "the player-boy" at school, and his election 
at Brookes's had been opposed on the same grounds. It was 
evidently his bitterest point, and Pitt probably knew this when, 
in replying to a speech of the ex-dramatist's, he said that " no 
man admired more than he did the abilities of that right hon- 
orable gentleman, the elegant sallies of his thought, the gay 
effusions of his fancy, his dramatic turns, and his epigrammatic 
point ; and if they were reserved for the proper stage, they 
would, no doubt, receive what the hon. gentleman's abilities 
always did receive, the plaudits of the audience ; and it would 
be his fortune sui plausu gaudere theatri. But this was not 
the proper scene for the exhibition of those elegancies." This 
was vulgar in Pitt, and probably every one felt so. But Sher- 
idan rose, cool and collected, and quietly replied : 

"On the particular sort of personality which the right hon. 
gentleman has thought proper to make use of, I need not make 
any comment. The propriety, the taste, the gentlemanly point 
of it, must have been obvious to the House. But let me assure 
the right hon. gentleman that I do now, and will at any time 
he chooses to repeat this sort of allusion, meet it with the most 
sincere good-humor. Nay, I will say more : flattered and en- 
couraged by the right hon. gentleman's panegyric on my tal- 
ents, if ever I again engage in the compositions he alludes to, 
I may be tempted to an act of presumption — to attempt an 
improvement on one of Ben Jonson's best characters, the 
character of the Angry Boy, in the 'Alchemist.' " 

The fury of Pitt, contrasted with the coolness of the man he 
had so shamefully attacked, made this sally irresistible, and 
from that time neither " the angry boy" himself, nor any of 
his colleagues, were anxious to twit Sheridan on his dramatic 
pursuits. 

Pitt wanted to lay a tax on every horse that started in a 
race. Lord Surrey, a turfish individual of the day, proposed 
one of five pounds on the winner. Sheridan, rising, told his 
lordship that the next time he visited Newmarket he would 
probably be greeted with the line : 



•350 GRATTAN S QUIP. — SHEKIDAN S SALLIES. 

"Jockey of Norfolk, be not so bold." 

Lord Rolle, the butt of the Opposition, who had attacked 
him in the famous satire "The Rolliad," so popular that it 
went through twenty-two editions in twenty-seven years, ac- 
cused Sheridan of inflammatory speeches among the operatives 
of the northern counties on the cotton question. Sheridan re- 
torted by saying that he believed Lord liolle must refer to 
" Compositions less prosaic, but more popular" (meaning the 
"Rolliad"), and thus successfully turned the laugh against 
him. 

It was Grattan, I think, who said, " When I can't talk sense, 
I talk metaphor." Sheridan often talked metaphor, though he 
sometimes mingled it with sense. His famous speech about 
the Begums of Oude is full of it, but we have one or two in- 
stances before that. Thus on the Duke of Richmond's report 
about fortifications, he said, turning to the duke, that " holding 
in his hand the report made by the Board of Officers, he com- 
plimented the noble president on his talents as an engineer, 
which were strongly evinced in planning and constructing that 
very paper He has made it a contest of posts, and con- 
ducted his reasoning not less on principles of trigonometry 
than of logic. There are certain assumptions thrown up, like 
advanced works, to keep the enemy at a distance from the 
p -incipal object of debate; strong provisos protect and cover 
the flanks of his assertions : his very queries are his casemates," 
and so on. 

When Lord Mulgrave said, on another occasion, that any 
man using his influence to obtain a vote for the crown ought 
to lose his head, Sheridan quietly remarked, that he was glad 
his lordship had said "ought to lose his head," not loould have 
lost it, for in that case the learned gentleman would not have 
had that evening " a face to have shown among us." 

Such are a few of his well-remembered replies in the House ; 
but his fame as an orator rested on the splendid speeches which 
he made at the impeachment of Warren Hastings. The first 
of these was made in the House on the 7th of February, 1*787. 
The whole story of the corruption, extortions, and cruelty of 
the worst of many bad rulers who have been imposed upon 
that unhappy nation of Hindoostan, and who, ignorant of how 
to parcere subject is, have gone on in their unjust oppression, 
only rendering it the more dangerous by weak concessions, is 
too well known to need a recapitulation here. The worst 
feature in the whole of Hastings's misconduct was, perhaps, 
his treatment of those unfortunate ladies whose money he 
coveted, the Begums of Oude. The Opposition was determin- 
ed to make the governor general's conduct a state question, 



WONDERFUL EFFECT OF SHERIDAN'S ELOQUENCE. 351 

but their charges had been received with little attention, till 
on this day Sheridan rose to denounce the cruel extortioner. 
He spoke for five hours and a half, and surpassed all he had 
ever said in eloquence. The subject was one to find sympathy 
in the hearts of Englishmen, who, though they beat their own 
wives, are always indignant at a man who dares to lay a little 
finger on any body else's. Then, too, the subject was Oriental: 
it might even be invested with something of romance and po- 
etry; the zenanah, sacred in the eyes of the oppressed natives, 
had been ruthlessly violated ; under a glaring Indian sun, amid 
the luxuriance of Indian foliage, these acts had been commit- 
ted, etc., etc. It was a fertile theme for a poet, and however 
little Sheridan cared for the Begums and their wrongs — and 
that he did care little appears from what he afterward said of 
Hastings himself — he could evidently make a telling speech 
out of the theme, and he did so. Walpole says that he turned 
every body's head. " One heard every body in the street rav- 
ing on the wonders of that speech ; for my part, I can not be- 
lieve it was so supernatural as they say." He affirms that there 
must be a witchery in Mr. Sheridan, who had no diamonds — 
as Hastings had — to win favor with, and says that the Opposi- 
tion may be fairly charged with sorcery. Burke declared the 
speech to be " the most astonishing eflbrt of eloquence, argu- 
ment, and wit united, of which there w T as any record or tradi- 
tion." Fox affirmed that " all he had ever heard, all he had 
ever read, when compared with it, dwindled into nothing, and 
vanished like vapor before the sun." But these w T ere partisans. 
Even Pitt acknowledged " that it surpassed all the eloquence 
of ancient and modern times, and possessed every thing that 
genius or art could furnish to agitate and control the human 
mind." One member confessed himself so unhinged by it, that 
he moved an adjournment, because he could not, in his then 
state of mind, give an unbiased vote. But the highest testi- 
mony was that of Logan, the defender of Hastings. At the 
end of the first hour of the speech, he said to a friend, " All 
this is declamatory assertion without proof." Another hour's 
speaking, and he muttered, "This is a most wonderful ora- 
tion !" A third, and he confessed " Mr. Hastings has acted 
very unjustifiably." At the end of the fourth, he exclaimed, 
" Mr. Hastings is a most atrocious criminal." And before the 
speaker had sat down, he vehemently protested that " Of all 
monsters of iniquity, the most enormous is Warren Hastings.." 
Such in those days was the effect of eloquence ; an art which 
has been eschewed in the present House of Commons, and 
which our newspapers affect to think is much out of place in 
an assembly met for calm deliberation. Perhaps they are 



352 THE SUPREME EFFORT. 

right ; but oh ! for the golden words of a Sheridan, a Fox — 
even a Pitt and Burke. 

It is said, though not proved, that on this same night of 
Sheridan's glory in the House of Commons, his " School for 
Scandal" was acted with " rapturous applause" at Covent Gar- 
den, and his "Duenna" no less successfully at Drury Lane. 
What a pitch of glory for the dunce who had been shamed 
into learning Greek vei'bs at Harrow ! Surely Dr. Parr must 
then have confessed that a man can be great without the clas- 
sics — nay, without even a decent English education, for Sheri- 
dan knew comparatively little of history and literature, cer- 
tainly less than the men against whom he was pitted or whose 
powers he emulated. He has been known to say to his friends, 
when asked to take part with them on some important ques- 
tion, " You know I'm an ignoramus — instruct me and I'll do 
my best." He had even to rub up his arithmetic when he 
thought he had some chance of being made Chancellor of the 
Exchequer ; but, perhaps, many a statesman before and after 
him has done as much as that. 

~No wonder that after such a speech in the House the cel- 
ebrated trial which commenced in the beginning of the follow- 
ing year should have roused the attention of the whole nation. 
The proceedings opened in Westminster Hall, the noblest room 
in England, on the 13th of February, 1788. The Queen and 
four of her daughters were seated in the Duke of Newcastle's 
box; the Prince of Wales walked in at the head of a hundred 
and fifty peers of the realm. The spectacle was imposing 
enough. But the trial proceeded slowly for some months, and 
it was not till the 3d of June that Sheridan rose to make his 
second great speech on this subject. 

The excitement was then at its highest. Two thirds of the 
peers with the peeresses and their daughters were present, 
and the whole of the vast hall was crowded to excess. The 
sun shone in brightly to light up the gloomy building, and the 
whole scene was splendid. Such was the enthusiasm that peo- 
ple paid fifty guineas for a ticket to hear the first orator of 
his day, for such he then was. The actor's son felt the enliv- 
ening influence of a full audience. He had been long prepar- 
ing for this moment, and he threw into his speech all the the- 
atrical effect of which he had studied much and inherited 
more. He spoke for many hours on the 3d, 5th, and 6th, and 
concluded with these words: 

"They (the House of Commons) exhort you by every thing 
that calls sublimely upon the heart of man, by the majesty of 
that justice which this bold man has libeled, by the Avide fame 
of your own tribunal, by the sacred pledges by which you 



THE STAK CULMINATES. 353 

swear in the solemn hour of decision, knowing that that decis- 
ion will then bring you the highest reward that ever blessed 
the heart of man, the consciousness of having done the great- 
est act of mercy for the world that the earth has ever yet re- 
ceived from any hand but heaven ! My Lords, I have done." 

Sheridan's valet was very proud of his master's success, and 
as he had been to hear the speech, was asked what part he con- 
sidered the finest. Plush replied by putting himself into Sher- 
ry's attitude, and imitating his voice admirably, solemnly ut- 
tering, " My Lords, I have done !" He should have added the 
word "nothing." Sheridan's eloquence had no more effect 
than the clear proofs of Hastings's guilt, and the impeachment, 
as usual, was but a troublesome sham, to satisfy the Opposition 
and dust the eyeballs of the country. Oh ! Sham, Sham, Sham ! 
if you are ever deposed and want a kingdom in a quiet corner 
of the globe, come to this island. We have long honored you 
here, and sacrifice to you at every general election and in ev- 
ery parliamentary Commission. Sham, you will be always 
welcome to the land of Johannes Bull ! 

Sheridan's great speech was made. The orator has con- 
cluded his oration ; fame was complete, and no more was 
wanted. Adieu, then, blue-books and parties, and come on the 
last grand profession of this man of many talents — that of the 
wit. That it was a profession there can be no doubt, for he 
lived on it : it was all his capital. He paid his bills in that 
coin alone : he paid his workmen, his actors, carpenters, build- 
ers with no more sterling metal ; with that ready tool he ex- 
tracted loans from the very men who came to be paid ; that 
brilliant ornament maintained his reputation in the senate, and 
his character in society. But wit without wisdom — the froth 
without the fluid — the capital without the pillar — is but a poor 
fortune, a wretched substitute for real worth and honest utili- 
ty. For a time men forgave to Mr. Sheridan — extravagant 
swindler, drunkard, and debauchee — what would long before 
have brought an honester, better, but less amusing man to a 
debtor's prison and the contempt of society ; but only for a 
time. 

Sheridan has now reached the pinnacle of his fame, and 
from this point we have to trace that decline which ended so 
awfully. 

When we call him a swindler, we must not be supposed to 
imply that he was so in heart. It is pleaded for him that he 
swindled "for the fun of the thing," like a modern Robin 
Hood, and like that forester bold, he was mightily generous 
with other men's money*. But Sheridan had the advantage of 
being born in a respectable station. Had his father been a 



354 NATIVE TASTE FOE SWINDLING. 

tinker or cobbler instead of a comedian, no doubt the son 
would have ended his days in some salubrious colony, chained 
some equally inglorious fellow-swindler, and no one would 
have written his Life, or taken a moment's pains to prove him 
any better than a jury had pronounced him. Thieving is 
thieving whether in sport or earnest, and Sheridan, no doubt, 
made it a very profitable employment. He had always a taste 
for the art of duping, and he had begun early in life — soon 
after leaving Harrow. He was spending a few days at Bris- 
tol, and Avanted a pair of new boots, but could not afford to 
pay for them. Shortly before he left, he called on two boot- 
makers, and ordered of each a pair, promising payment on de- 
livery. He fixed the morning of his departure for the trades- 
men to send in their goods. When the first arrived he tried 
on the boots, complained that that for the right foot pinched 
a little, and ordered Crispin to take it back, stretch it, and 
bring it again at nine the next morning. The second arrived 
soon after, and this time it was the boot for the left foot which 
pinched. Same complaint ; same order given ; each had taken 
away only the pinching boot, and left the other behind. The 
same afternoon Sheridan left in his new boots for town, and 
when the two shoemakers called at nine the next day, each 
with a boot in his hand, we can imagine their disgust at find- 
ing how neatly they had been duped. 

Anecdotes of this kind swarm in every account of Dick 
Sheridan — many of them, perhaps, quite apocryphal, others ex- 
aggerated or attributed to this noted trickster, but all tending 
to show how completely he was master of this high art. His 
ways of eluding creditors used to delight me, I remember, 
when an Oxford boy, often inclined to imitate the great com- 
edian, and they are only paralleled by Oxford stories. One of 
these may not be generally known, and was worthy of Sherry. 
Every Oxonian knows Hall, the boat-builder at Folly Bridge. 
Mrs. Hall was, in my time, proprietress of those dangerous 
skills and nutshell canoes which we young harebrains delight- 
ed to launch on the Isis. Some youthful Sheridanian had a 
long account with this elderly and bashful personage, who had 
applied in vain for her money, till, coming one day to his 
rooms, she announced her intention not to leave till the money 
was paid. " Very well, Mrs. Hall, then you must sit down and 
make yourself comfortable while I dress, for I am going out 
directly." Mrs. H. sat down composedly, and with equal com- 
posure the youth took off his coat. Mrs. H. was not abashed, 
but in another moment the debtor removed his waistcoat also. 
Mrs. H. was still immovable. Sundry other articles of dress 
followed, and the good lady began to be nervous. " Now, 



DUNS OUTWITTED. 355 

Mrs. Hall, you can stay if you like, 'but I assure you that I am 
going to change all my dress." Suiting the action to the 
word, he began to remove his lower garments, when Mrs. Hall, 
shocked and furious, rushed from the room. 

This reminds us of Sheridan's treatment of a female cred- 
itor. He had for some years hired his carriage-horses from 
Edbrooke in Clarges Street, and his bill was a heavy one. 
Mrs. Edbrooke wanted a new bonnet, and blew up her mate 
for not insisting on payment. The curtain lecture was follow- 
ed next day by r refusal to allow Mr. Sheridan to have the 
horses till the account was settled. Mr. Sheridan sent the po- 
litest possible message in reply, begging that Mrs. Edbrooke 
would allow his coachman to drive her in his own carriage to 
his door, and promising that the matter should be satisfactorily 
arranged. The good woman was delighted, dressed in her 
best, and bill in hand, entered the M. P.'s chariot. Sheridan 
meanwhile had given orders to his servants. Mrs. Edbrooke 
was shown up into the back drawing-room, where a slight 
luncheon, of which she was begged to partake, was laid out ; 
and she was assured that her debtor would not keep her wait- 
ing long, though for the moment engaged. The horse-dealer's 
wife sat down and discussed a Aving of chicken and glass of 
wine, and in the mean time her victimize! 1 had been watching 
his opportunity, slipped down stairs, jumped into the vehicle, 
and drove off. Mrs. Edbrooke finished her lunch and waited 
in vain ; ten minutes, twenty, thirty, passed, and then she rang 
the bell : " Very sorry, ma'am, but Mr. Sheridan went out on 
important business half an hour ago." " And the carriage ?" 
" Oh, ma'am, Mr. Sheridan never walks." 

He procured his wine in the same style. Chalier, the wine- 
merchant, Avas his creditor to a large amount, and had stopped 
supplies. Sherman was to give a grand dinner to the leaders 
of the Opposition, and had no port or sherry to offer them. 
On the morning of the day fixed he sent for Chalier, and told 
him he Avanted to settle his account. The importer, much 
pleased, said he Avould go home and bring it at once. " Stay," 

cried the debtor, "will you dine Avith me to-day ? Lord — , 

Sir , and So-and-so are coming." Chalier was 

flattered and readily accepted. Returning to his office, he told 
his clerk that he should dine with Mr. Sheridan, and therefore 
leave early. At the proper hour he arrived in full dress, and 
was no sooner in the house than his host dispatched a message 
to the clerk at the office, saying that Mr. Chalier AA'ished him 
to send up at once three dozen of Burgundy, two of claret, 
tAVO of port, etc., etc. Nothing seemed more natural, and the 
Avine Avas forwarded, just in time for the dinner. It Avas high- 



356 THE LAWYER JOCKEYED. 

ly praised by the guests, who asked Sheridan who was his 
wine-merchant. The host bowed toward Chalier, gave him a 
high recommendation, and impressed him with the belief that 
he was telling a polite falsehood in order to secure him other 
customers. Little did he think that he was drinking his own 
wine, and that it was not, and probably never would be, paid 
for! 

In like manner, when he wanted a particular Burgundy from 
an innkeeper at Richmond, who declined to supply it till his 
bill was paid, he sent for the man, and had no sooner seen him 
sate in the house than he drove off to Richmond, saw his wife, 
told her he had just had a conversation with mine host, settled 
every thing, and would, to save them trouble, take the wine 
with him in his carriage. The condescension overpowered the 
good woman, who ordered it at once to be produced, and 
Sheridan drove home about the time that her husband was re- 
turning to Richmond, weary of waiting for his absent debtor. 
But this kind of trickery could not always succeed without 
some knowledge of his creditor's character. In the case of 
Holloway, the lawyei*, Sheridan took advantage of his well- 
known vanity of his judgment of horse-flesh. Kelly gives the 
anecdote as authentic. He was walking one day with Sheri- 
dan, close to the church-yard of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, 
when, as ill-luck would have it, up comes Holloway on horse- 
back, and in a furious rage, complains that he has called on 
Mr. Sheridan time and again in Hertford Street, and can never 
gain admittance. He proceeds to violent threats, and slangs 
his debtor roundly. Sheridan, cool as a whole bed of cucum- 
bers, takes no notice of these attacks, but quietly exclaims, 
" What a beautiful creature you're riding, Holloway !" The 
lawyer's weak point was touched. 

" You were speaking to me the other day dlbout a horse for 
Mrs. Sheridan ; now this Avould be a treasure for a lady." 

" Does he canter well?" asked Sheridan, with a look of bus^ 
iness. 

" Like Pegasus himself." 

" If that's'the case, I shouldn't mind, Holloway, stretching a 
point for him. Do you mind showing me his paces ?" 

" Not at all," replies the lawyer, only too happy to show 
off his own ; and touching up the horse, put him to a quiet 
canter. The moment is not to be lost ; the church-yard gate 
is at hand ; Sheridan slips in, knowing that his mounted tor- 
mentor can not follow him, and there bursts into a roar of 
laughter, which is joined in by Kelly, but not by the returning 
Holloway. 

But if he escaped an importunate lawyer once in a way like 




"A TREASURE FOR A LADY" — SHERIDAN AND THE I.AWYER. 



ADVENTURES WITH BAILIFFS. 359 

this, he required more ingenuity to get rid of the limbs of the 
law, when they camef as they did frequently in his later years. 
It was the fashionable thing in by-gone novels of the "Pelham" 
school, and even in more recent comedies, to introduce a well- 
dressed sheriff's officer at a dinner-party or ball, and take him 
through a variety of predicaments, ending, at length, in the 
revelation of his real character ; and probably some such scene 
is still enacted from time to time in the houses of the extrava- 
gant : but Sheridan's adventures with bailiffs seem to have ex- 
cited more attention. In the midst of his difficulties he never 
ceased to entertain his friends, and" why should he not do so, 
since he had not to pay?" " Pay your bills, sir ? what a shame- 
ful waste of money !" he once said. Thus, one day a young- 
friend was met by him and taken back to dinner, " quite in a 
quiet way, just to meet a very old friend of mine, a man of 
great talent, and most charming companion." When they ar- 
rived they found " the old friend" already installed, and pre- 
senting a somewhat unpolished appearance, which the young 
man explained to himself by supposing him to be a genius of 
somewhat low extraction. His habits at dinner, the eager 
look, the free use of his knife, and so forth, were all accounted 
for in the same way, but that he was a genius of no slight dis- 
tinction was clear from the deep respect and attention with 
which Sheridan listened to his slightest remarks, and asked 
Iiis opinion on English poetry. Meanwhile Sheridan and the 
servant between them plied the genius very liberally with 
wine ; and the former, rising, made him a complimentary speech 
,on his critical powers, while the young guest, who had heard 
nothing from his lips but the commonest platitudes in very 
bad English, grew more and more amused. The wine told in 
time, the " genius" sang songs which were more Saxon than 
delicate, talked loud, clapped his host on the shoulder, and at 
last rolled fairly under the table. " Now," said Sheridan, 
quite calmly to his young friend, " we will go up stairs ; and, 
Jack" (to his servant) " take that man's hat and give him to 
the watch." He then explained in the same calm tone, that 
this was a bailiff of whose company he was growing rather 
tired, and wanted to be rid. 

But his finest tricks were undoubtedly those by which he 
turned, harlequin -like, a creditor into a lender. This was 
done by sheer force of persuasion, by assuming a lofty indig- 
nation, or by putting forth his claims to mercy with the most 
touching eloquence, over which he would laugh heartily when 
his point was gained. He was often compelled to do this dur- 
ing his theatrical management, when a troublesome creditor 
might have interfered with the success of the establishment. 



300 HOUSE OF COMMONS GREEK. 

He talked over an upholsterer who came with a writ for £350, 
till the latter handed him, instead, a check for £200. He once, 
whe.n the actors struck for arrears of wages to the amount of 
£3000, and his bankers refused flatly to Kelly to advance an- 
other penny, screwed the whole sum out of them in less than 
a quarter of an hour by sheer talk. He got a gold watch from 
Harris, the manager, with whom he had broken several ap- 
pointments, by complaining that as he had no watch he could 
never tell the time fixed for their meetings ; and, as for put- 
ting off pressing creditors, and turning furious foes into affec- 
tionate friends, he was such an adept at it, that his reputation 
as a dun-destroyer is quite on a par with his fame as -comedian 
and orator. 

Hoaxing, a style of amusement fortunately out of fashion 
now, was almost a passion with him, and his practical jokes 
were as merciless as his satire. He and Tickell, who had mar- 
vied the sister of his wife, used to play them off on one another 
like a couple of schoolboys. One evening, for instance, Sher- 
idan got together all the crockery in the house and arranged 
it in a dark jiassage, leaving a small channel for escape for him- 
self, and then, having teased Tickell till he rushed after him, 
bounded out and picked his way gingerly along the passage. 
His friend followed him unwittingly, and at the first step stum- 
bled over a washhand-basin, and fell forward with a crash on 
piles of plates and dishes, which cut his face and hands in a 
most cruel manner, Sheridan all the while laughing immoder- 
ately at the end of the passage, secure from vengeance. 

But his most impudent hoax was that on the Honorable- 
House of Commons itself. Lord Belgrave had made a very 
telling speech which he wound up with a Greek quotation, 
loudly applauded. Sheridan had no arguments to meet him 
with; so rising, he admitted the force of his lordship's quota- 
tion (of which he probably did not understand a word), but 
added that had he gone a little farther, and completed the 
passage, he would have seen that the context completely al- 
tered the sense. He would prove it to the House, he said, 
and forthwith rolled forth a grand string of majestic gibber- 
ish so well imitated that the whole assembly cried, " Hear, 
hear !" Lord Belgrave rose again, and frankly admitted that 
the passage had the meaning ascribed to it by the honorable 
gentleman, and that he had overlooked it at the moment. At 
the end of the evening, Fox, who prided himself on his clas- 
sical lore, came up to and said to him, " Sheridan, how came 
you to be so ready with that passage ? It is certainly as you 
say, but I was not aware of it before you quoted it." Sherry 
was wise enough to keep his own counsel for the time, but 



CURIOUS MIMICRY. 361 

must have felt delightfully tickled at the ignorance of the 
would-be savants with whom he was politically associated. 
Probably Sheridan could not at any time have quoted a whole 
passage of Greek on the spur of the moment ; but it is certain 
that he had not kept up his classics, and at the time in ques- 
tion must have forgotten the little he ever knew of them. 

This facility of imitating exactly the sound of a language 
without introducing a single word of it is not so very rare, 
but is generally possessed in greater readiness by those who 
know no tongue but their own, and are therefore more struck 
by the strangeness of a foreign one, when hearing it. Many 
of us have heard Italian songs in which there was not a word 
of actual Italian sung in London burlesques, and some of us 
have laughed at Levassor's capital imitation of English ; but 
perhaps the cleverest mimic of the kind I ever heard was M. 
Laffitte, brother of that famous banker who made his fortune 
by picking up a pin. This gentleman could speak nothing 
but French, but had been brought by his business into con- 
tact with foreigners of every race at Paris, and when he once 
began his little trick, it was impossible to believe that he was 
not possessed of a gift of tongues. His German and Italian 
were good enough, but his English was so splendidly coun- 
terfeited, that after listening to him for a short time, I sud- 
denly heard a roar of laughter from all present, for I had act- 
ually unconsciously answered Mm, "Yes," "No," "Exactly 
so," and " I quite agree with you !" 

Undoubtedly much of Sherry's depravity must be attribu- 
ted to his intimacy with a man whom it was a great honor to 
a youngster then to know, but who would probably be scout- 
ed even from a London club in the present day — the Prince 
of Wales. The part of a courtier is always degrading enough 
to play ; but to be courtier to a prince whose favor was to be 
won by proficiency in vice and audacity in follies, to truckle 
to his tastes, to pander to his voracious lusts, to win his smiles 
by the invention of a new pleasure, and his approbation by 
the plotting of a new villainy, what an office for the author of 
" The School for Scandal," and the orator renowned for de- 
nouncing the wickednesses of Warren Hastings ! What a life 
for the young poet who had wooed and won the Maid of Bath 
— for the man of strong domestic affections, who wept over his 
father's sternness, and loved his son only too well ! It was bad 
enough for such mere worldlings as Captain Hanger or Beau 
Brumraell, but for a man of higher and purer feelings, like Dick 
Sheridan, who, with all his faults, had some poetry in his soul, 
such a career was doubly disgraceful. 

It was at the house of the beautiful, livelv, and adventurous 

O 



o02 THE EOYAL BOON COMPANION. 

Duchess of Devonshire, the partisan of Charles James Fox, 
who loved him or his cause — for Fox and Liberalism were 
often one in ladies' eyes — so well, that she could give greasy 
Steele, the butcher, a kiss for his vote, that Sheridan first met 
the prince — then a boy in years, but already more than an 
adult in vice. No doubt the youth whom Fox, Brummell, 
Hanger, Lord Surrey, Sheridan, the tailors, and the women 
combined to turn at once into the finest gentleman and great- 
est blackguard in Europe, was at that time as fascinating in ap- 
pearance and manner as any one, prince or not, could be. He 
was by far the handsomest of the Hanoverians, and had the 
least amount of their sheepish look. He possessed all their 
taste and capacity for gallantry, with none of the German 
coarseness, which certain other Princes of Wales exhibited in 
their amorous address. Ills coarseness was of a more sens- 
ual, but less imperious kind. He had his redeeming points, 
which few of his ancestors had, and his liberal hand and warm 
heart won him friends, where his conduct could win him little 
else than contempt. Sheridan was introduced to him by Fox, 
and Mrs. Sheridan by the Duchess of Devonshire. The prince 
had that which always takes with Englishmen — a readiness of 
conviviality, and a recklessness of character. He was ready to 
chat, drink, and bet with Sheridan, or any new-comer equally 
well recommended, and an introduction to young George was 
always followed by an easy recognition. With all this he 
managed to keep up a certain amount of royal dignity under 
the most trying circumstances, but he had none of that easy 
grace which made Charles II. beloved by his associates. When 
the George had gone too far, he had no resource but to cut the 
individual with whom he had bobbed and nobbed, and he was 
as ungrateful in his enmities as he was ready with his friend- 
ship. Brummell had taught him to dress, and Sheridan had 
given him wiser counsels : he quai'reled with both for trifles, 
which, if he had had real dignity, would never have occurred, 
and if he had had real friendship, would easily have been over- 
looked. 

Sheridan's breach with the prince was honorable to him. 
He could not wholly approve of the conduct of that personage 
and his ministers, and he told him openly that his life was at 
his service, but his character was the property of the country. 
The prince replied that Sheridan " might impeach his ministers 
on the morrow — that would not impair their friendship ;" yet 
turned on his heel, and was never his friend again. -When, 
again, the " delicate investigation" came off, he sent for Sheri- 
dan, and asked his aid. The latter replied, " Your royal high- 
ness honors me, but I will never take part against a woman, 



STREET FROLICS AT NIGHT. 363 

whether she be right or wrong." His political courage atones 
somewhat for the want of moral courage he displayed in pan- 
dering to the prince's vices. 

Many an anecdote is told of Sheridan and "Wales" — many, 
indeed, that can not be repeated. Their bets were often of 
the coarsest riature, won by Sheridan in the coarsest manner. 
A great intimacy sprang up between the two reprobates, and 
Sherry became one of the satellites of that dissolute prince. 
There are few of the stories of their adventures which can be 
told in a work like this, but we may give one or two specimens 
of the less disgraceful character : 

The Prince, Lord Surrey, and Sheridan were in the habit 
of seeking nightly adventures of any kind that suggested itself 
to their lively minds. A low tavern, still in existence, was the 
rendezvous of the heir to the crown and his noble and distin- 
guished associates. This was the " Salutation," in Tavistock 
Court, Covent Garden, a night-house for gardeners and coun- 
trymen, and the sharpers who fleeced both, and was kept by a 
certain Mother Butler, who favored in every way the adventur- 
ous designs of her exalted guests. Here wigs, smock-frocks, 
and other disguises were in readiness ; and here, at call, was 
to be found a ready-made magistrate, whose sole occupation 
was to deliver the young Haroun and his companies from the 
dilemmas which their adventures naturally brought them into, 
and which were generally more or less concerned with the 
watch. Poor old watch ! what happy days, when members 
of parliament, noblemen, and sucking monarchs condescended 
to break thy bob-wigged head ! and — blush, Z 350, immaculate 
constable — to toss thee a guinea to buy plaster with. 

In addition to the other disguise, aliases were of course 
assumed. The prince went by the name of Blackstock, Gray- 
stock was my Lord Surrey, and Thinstock Richard Brinsley 
Sheridan. The treatment of women by the police is. tradi- 
tional. The "unfortunate" — unhappy creatures! — are their 
pet aversion ; and once in their clutches, receive no mercy. 
The " Charley" of old was quite as brutal as the modern Her- 
cules of the glazed hat, and the three adventurers showed an 
amount of zeal worthy of a nobler cause, in rescuing the drunk- 
en Lais from his grasp. On one occasion they seem to have 
hit on a " deserving case ;" a slight skirmish with the watch 
ended in a rescue, and the erring creature was taken off to a 
house of respectability sufficient to protect her; Here she 
told her tale, which, however improbable, turned out to be 
true. It was a very old, a very simple one — the common his- 
tory of many a frail, foolish girl, cursed with beauty, and the 
prey of a practiced seducer. The main jDeculiarity lay in the 



364 AN OLD TALE. 

fact of her respectable birth, and his position, she being the 
daughter of a solicitor, he the son of a nobleman. Marriage 
was promised, of course, as it has been promised a million 
times Avith the same intent, and for the millionth time was 
not performed. The seducer took her from her home, kept 
her quiet for a time, and when the novelty was gone, abandon- 
ed her. The old story went on ; poverty — a child — a mother's 
love struggling with a sense of shame — a visit to her father's 
house at the last moment, as a forlorn hope. There she had 
crawled on her knees to one of those relentless parents on 
whose heads lies the utter loss of their children's souls. The 
false pride, that spoke of the blot on his name, the disgrace of 
his house — when a Savior's example should have bid him for- 
give and raise the penitent in her misery from the dust — whis- 
pered him to turn her from his door. He ordered the footman 
to put her out. The man, a nobleman in plush, moved by his 
young mistress's utter misery, would not obey though it cost 
him his place, and the harder-hearted father himself thrust his 
starving child into the cold street, into the drizzling rain, and 
slammed the door upon her cries of agony. The footman slip- 
ped out after hei', and five shillings — a large sum for him — 
found its way from his kind hand to hers. Now the common 
ending migjat have come ; now starvation, the slow, unwilling 
recourse to more shame and deeper vice ; then the forced hilar- 
ity, the unreal smile, which in so many of these poor creatures 
hides a canker at the heart; the gradual degradation — lower 
still and lower — oblivion for a moment sought in the bottle — 
a life of sin and death ended in a hospital. The will of Provi- 
dence turned the frolic of three voluptuaries to good account ; 
the prince gave his purseful, Sheridan his one last guinea for 
her present needs ; the name of the good-hearted Plush was 
discovered, and he was taken into Carlton House, where he 
soon became known as Roberts, the prince's confidential serv- 
ant ; and Sheridan bestirred himself to rescue forever the poor 
lady, whose beauty still remained as a temptation.. He pro- 
cured her a situation, where she studied for the stage, on which 
she eventually appeared. "All's well that ends well;" her 
secret was kept, till one admirer came honorably forward. To 
him it was confided, and he was noble enough to foi'give the 
one false step of youth. She was well married, and the boy for 
whom she had suffered so much fell at Trafalgar, a lieutenant 
in the navy. ' 

To better men such an adventure would have been a solemn 
warning ; such a tale, told by the ruined one herself, a sermon, 
every word of which would have clung to their memories. 
What effect, if any, it may have had on Blackstock and his 
companions must have been very fleeting. 



THE FRAY IK ST. GILES'S. ^65 

It is not so very long since the Seven Dials and St. Giles's 
were haunts of wickedness and dens of thieves, into which the 
police scarcely dared to penetrate. Probably their mysteries 
would have afforded more amusement to the artist and the 
student of character than to the mere seeker of adventure, but 
it was still, I remember, in my early days, a great feat to visit 
by night one of the noted " cribs" to which " the profession" 
which fills Newgate was wont to resort. The " Brown Bear," 
in Broad Street, St. Giles's, was one of these pleasant haunts, 
and thither the three adventurers determined to go. This 
style of adventure is out of date, and no longer amusing. Of 
course a fight ensued, in which the prince and his companions 
showed immense pluck against terrible odds, and in which, as 
one reads in the novels of the " London Journal" or " Family 
Herald," the natural superiority of the well-born of course 
displayed itself to great advantage. Surely Bulwer has de- 
scribed such scenes too graphically in some of his earlier nov- 
els to make a minute description here at all necessary ; but the 
reader who is curious in the matter may be referred to a work 
which has recently appeared under the title of " Sheridan and 
his Times," professing to be written by an Octogenarian, inti- 
mate with the hero. The fray ended with the arrival of the 
watch, who rescued Blackstock, Graystock, and Thinstock, and 
with Dogberryan stupidity carried them off to a neighboring 
lock-up. The examination which took place was just the oc- 
casion for Sheridan's fun to display itself on, and pretending 
to turn informer, he succeeded in bewildering the unfortunate 
parochial constable, who conducted it, till the arrival of the 
magistrate, whose duty was to deliver his friends from durance 
vile. The whole scene is well described in the book just refer- 
red to, with, we presume, a certain amount of idealizing ; but 
the " Octogenarian" had probably heard the story from Sheri- 
dan himself, and the main points must be accepted as correct. 
The affair ended, as usual, with a supper at the " Salutation." 

We must now follow Sheridan in his gradual downfall. 

One of the causes of this — as far as money was concerned — 
was his extreme indolence and utter negligence. He trusted 
far too much to his ready wit and rapid genius. Thus when 
"Pizarro" was to appear, day after day went by, and nothing 
was done. On the night of representation, only four acts out 
of five were written, and even these had not been rehearsed, 
the principal performers, Siddons, Charles Kemble, and Barry- 
more, having only just received their parts. Sheridan was up 
in the prompter's room, actually writing the fifth act while the 
first was being performed, and every now and then appeared 
in the green-room with a fresh relay of dialogue, and setting 



300 UNOPENED LETTERS. — AN ODD INCIDENT. 

all in good-humor by his merry abuse of his own negligence. 
In spite of this " Pizarro" succeeded. He seldom wrote ex- 
cept at night, and surrounded by a profusion of lights. Wine 
was his great stimulant in composition, as it has been to bet- 
ter and worse authors. " If the thought is slow to come," he 
would say, " a glass of good wine encourages it ; and when it 
does come, a glass of good wine rewards it." Those glasses of 
good wine were, unfortunately, even more frequent than the 
good thoughts, many and merry as they were. 

His neglect of letters was a standing joke against him. He 
never took the trouble to open any that he did not expect, and 
often left sealed many that he was most anxious to read. He 
once appeared with his begging face at the bank, humbly ask- 
ing an advance of twenty pounds. " Certainly, sir ; would you 
like any more? — fifty or a hundred?" said the smiling clerk. 
Sherry was overpowered. He would like a hundred. "Two 
or three?" asked the scribe. Sherry thought he was joking, 
but was ready for two or even three — he was always ready 
for more. But he could not conceal his surprise. " Have yon 
not received our letter ?" the clerk asked, perceiving it. Cer- 
tainly he had received the epistle, which informed him that his 
salary as Receiver General of Cornwall had been paid in, but 
he had never opened it. 

This neglect of letters once brought him into a troublesome 
lawsuit about the theatre. It was necessary to pay certain 
demands, and he had applied to the Duke of Bedford to be his 
security. The duke had consented, and for a whole year his 
letter of consent remained unopened. In the mean time Sheri- 
dan had believed that the duke had neglected him, and allowed 
the demands to be brought into court. 

In the same way he had long before committed himself in 
the affair with Captain Matthews. In order to 'give a public 
denial of certain reports circulated in Bath, he had called upon 
an editor, requesting him to insert the said reports in his paper, 
in order that he might write him a letter to refute them. The 
editor at once complied, the calumny was printed and publish- 
ed, but Sheridan forgot all about his own refutation, which was 
applied for in vain till too late. 

Other causes were his extravagance and intemperance. There 
was an utter want of even common moderation in every thing 
he did. Whenever his boyish spirits suggested any freak, 
whenever a craving of any kind possessed him, no matter what 
the consequences here or hereafter, he rushed heedlessly into 
the indulgence of it. Perhaps the enemy had never an easier 
subject to deal with. Any sin in which there was a show of 
present mirth, or easy pleasure, was as easily taken up by 



RECKLESS EXTRAVAGANCE. 367 

Sheridan as if lie had not a single particle of conscience or re- 
ligious feeling, and yet we are not at all prepared to say that 
he lacked either ; he had only deadened both by excessive in- 
dulgence of his fancies. The temptation of wealth and fame 
had been too much for the poor and obscure young man who 
rose to them so suddenly, and, as so often happens, those very 
talents which should have been his glory, were, in fact, his 
ruin. 

His extravagance was unbounded. At a time when misfor- 
tune lay thick upon him, and bailiffs were hourly expected, he 
would invite a large party to a dinner, which a prince might 
have given, and to which one prince sometimes sat down. On 
one occasion, having no plate left from the pawnbroker's, he 
had to prevail on " my uncle" to lend him some for a ban- 
quet he was to give. The spoons and forks were sent, and 
with them two of his men, who, dressed in livery, waited, no 
doubt with the most vigilant attention, on the party. Such at 
that period was the host's reputation, when he could not even 
be trusted not to pledge another man's property. At one 
time his income was reckoned at £15,000 a year, when the 
theatre was prosperous. Of this he is said to have spent not 
more than £5000 on his household, while the balance went to 
pay for his former follies, debts, and the interest, lawsuits often 
arising from mere carelessness and judgments against the the- 
atre ! Probably a great deal of it was betted away, drunk 
away, thrown away in one way or another. As for betting, 
he generally lost all the wagers he made : as he said himself — 
"I never made a bet upon my own judgment that I did not 
lose ; and I never won but one, which I had made against my 
judgment." His bets were generally laid in hundreds ; and 
though he did not gamble, he could of course run through a 
good deal of money in this way. He betted on every possible 
trifle, but chiefly, it would seem, on political possibilities ; the 
state of the funds, the result of an election, or the downfall of 
a ministry. Horse-races do not seem to have possessed any 
interest for him, and, in fact, he scarcely knew one kind of horse 
from another. He was never an adept at field-sports, though 
very ambitious of being thought a sportsman. Once, when 
staying in the country, he went out with a friend's game- 
keeper to shoot pheasants, and after wasting a vast amount 
of powder and shot upon the air, he was only rescued from 
ignominy by the sagacity of his companion, who, going a little 
behind him when a bird rose, brought it down so neatly that 
Sheridan, believing he had killed it himself, snatched it up, and 
rushed bellowing with glee back to the house to show that ho 
could shoot. In the same way, he tried his hand at fishing in 



3G8 LIKE FATHER, I.IKE SON. 

a wretched little stream behind the Deanery at Winchester, 
using, however, a net, as easier to handle than a rod. Some 
boys, who had watched his want of success a long time, at last 
bought a few pennyworth of pickled herrings, and throwing 
them on the stream, allowed them to float down toward the 
eager disciple of old Izaak. Sheridan saw them coming, rushed 
in regardless of his clothes, cast his net, and in great triumph 
secured them. When he had landed his prize, however, there 
were the boys bursting with laughter, and Piscator saw he was 
their dupe. "Ah !" cried he, laughing in concert, as he looked 
at his dripping clothes, "this is a pretty pickle indeed!" 

His extravagance was well known to his friends, as well as 
to his creditors. Lord Guildford met him one day. " Well, 
Sherry, so you've taken a new house, I hear." "Yes, and 
you'll see now that every thing will go on like clock-work." 
" Ay," said my lord, with a knowing leer, " tick, tick." Even 
his son Tom used to laugh at him for it. " Tom, if you marry 
that girl, I'll cut you off" with a shilling." " Then you must 
borrow it," replied the ingenious youth.* Tom sometimes dis- 
concerted his father with his inherited wit — his only inherit- 
ance. He pressed urgently for money on one, as on many an 
occasion. " I have none," was the reply, as usual ; " there is a 
pair of pistols up stairs, a horse in the stable, the night is dark, 
and Hounslow Heath at hand." 

" I understand what you mean," replied young Tom ; " but 
I tried that last night, and unluckily stopped your treasurer, 
Peake, who told me you had been beforehand with him, and 
robbed him of every sixpence he had in the world." 

So much for the respect of son to father ! 

Papa had his revenge of the young wit he had begotten, 
when Tom, talking of Parliament, announced his intention of 
entering it on an independent basis, ready to be bought by 
the highest bidder. " I shall write on my forehead," said he, 
"'To let."' 

" And under that, Tom, 'Unfurnished,' " rejoined Sherry the 
elder. The joke is now stale enough. 

But Sheridan was more truly witty in putting down a young 
braggart whom he met at dinner at a country house. There 
are still to be found, like the bones of dead asses in a field 
newly plowed, in some parts of the country, youths, who are 
so hopelessly behind their age, and indeed every age, as to 
look upon authorship as degrading, all knowledge, save Latin 
and Greek, as " a bore," and all entertainment but hunting, 
shooting, fishing, and badger-drawing, as unworthy of a man. 

* Another version is that Tom replied — "You don't happen to have it 
about you, sir, do you?" 



A SEVERE AND WITTY REBUKE. 369 

In the last century these young animals, who unite the mod- 
esty of the puppy with the clear-sightedness of the pig, not to 
mention the progressiveness of another quadruped, were more 
numerous than in the present day, and in consequence more 
forward in their remarks. It was one of these charming 
youths, who was staying in the same house as Sheridan, and 
who, quite unprovoked, began at dinner to talk of "actors and 
authors, and those low sort of people, you know." Sherry said 
naught, but patiently bided his time. The next day there was 
a large dinner-party, and Sheridan and the youth happened to 
sit opposite to one another in the most conspicuous part of the 
table. Young Nimrod was kindly obliging his side of the 
table with the extraordinary leaps of his hunter, the perfect 
working of his new double-barreled Manton, etc., bringing of 
course number one in as the hero in each case. In a moment 
of silence, Sheridan, with an air of great politeness, addressed 
his unhappy victim. " He had not," he said, " been able to 
catch the whole of the very interesting account he had heard 

Mr. relating." All eyes were turned upon the two. 

" Would Mr. permit him to ask who it was who made 

the extraordinary leap he had mentioned ?" " I, sir," replied 
the youth, with some pride. "Then who w^as it killed the 
"wild duck at that distance?" "I, sir." "Was it your setter 
who behaved so well ?" " Yes, mine, sir," getting rather red 
over this examination. " And who caught the huge salmon so 
neatly ?" " I, sir." And so the questioning went on through 
a dozen more items, till the young man, w r eary of answering 
" I, sir," and growing redder and redder every moment, would 
gladly have hid his head under the table-cloth, in spite of his 
sporting prowess. But Sheridan had to give him the coup de 
grace. 

" So, sir," said he, very politely, " you were the chief actor 
in every anecdote, and the author of them all; surely it is im- 
politic to despise your own professions." 

Sheridan's intemperance was as great and as incurable as 
his extravagance, and we think his mind, if not his body, lived 
only on stimulants. He could neither write nor speak with- 
out them. One day, before one of his finest speeches in the 
House, he was seen to enter a coffee-house, call for a pint of 
brandy, and swallow it "neat," and almost at one gulp. His 
friends occasionally interfered. This drinking, they told him, 
would destroy the coat of his stomach. "Then my stomach 
must digest in its waistcoat," laughed Sherry. 

Where are the topers of yore ? Jovial I will not call them, 
for every one knows that 

"Mirth and laughter," 
Q2 



370 CONVIVIAL EXCESSES OF A PAST DAY. 

worked up with a cork-screw, are followed by 

"Headaches and hot coppers the day after." 

But where are those Anakim of the bottle, who could floor 
their two of port and one of Madeira, though the said two and 
one floored them in turn ? The race, I believe, has died out. 
Our heads have got weaker, as our cellars grew emptier. The 
arrangement was convenient. The daughters of Eve have 
nobly undertaken to atone for the naughty conduct of their 
primeval mamma, by reclaiming men, and dragging them from 
the Hades of the mahogany to that seventh heaven of muffins 
and English ballads prepared for .them in the drawing-room. 

We are certainly astounded, even to incredulity, when we 
read of the deeds of a David or a Samson ; but such wonder- 
ment can be nothing compared to that which a generation or 
two hence will feel, when sipping, as a great extravagance and 
unpardonable luxury, two thimblefuls of "African Sherry," the 
young demirep of the day reads that three English gentlemen, 
Sheridan, Richardson, and Ward, sat down one day to dinner, 
and before they rose again — if they ever rose, which seems 
doubtful — or, at least, were raised, had emptied five bottles of 
port, two of Madeira, and one of brandy ! Yet this was but 
one instance in a thousand ; there was nothing extraordinary 
in it, and it is only mentioned because the amount drunk is 
accurately given by the unhappy owner of the wine, Kelly, the 
composer, who unfortunately, or fortunately, was not present, 
and did not even imagine that the three honorable gentlemen 
were discussing his little store. Yet Sherry does not seem to 
have believed much in his friend's vintages, for he advised him 
to alter his brass plate to " Michael Kelly, Composer of Wine 
and Importer of Music." He made a better joke, when, din- 
ing with Lord Thurlow, he tried in vain to induce him to pro- 
duce a second bottle of some extremely choice Constantia from 
the Cape of Good Hope. " Ah," he muttered to his neighbor, 
" pass me that decanter, if you please, for I must return to Ma- 
deira, as I see I can not double the Cape" 

But as long as Richard Brinsley was a leader of political 
and fashionable circles, as long as he had a position to keep 
up, an ambition to satisfy, a labor to complete, his drinking 
was, if not moderate, not extraordinary for his time and his 
associates. But when a man's ambition is limited to mere 
success — when fame and a flash for himself are all he cares for, 
and there is no truer, grander motive for his sustaining the 
position he has climbed to — when, in short, it is his own glory, 
not mankind's good, he has ever striven for — woe, woe, woe 
when the hour of success is come ! I can not stop to name 



BITTER PANGS. — THE SCYTHE OF DEATH. 371 

and examine instances, but let me be allowed to refer to that 
bugbear who is called up whenever greatness of any kind has 
to be illustrated — Napoleon the Great ; or let me take any of 
the lesser Napoleons in lesser grades in any nation, any age — 
the men who have had no star but self and self-glory before 
them — and let me ask if any one can be named who, if he has 
survived the attainment of his ambition, has not gone down 
the other side of the hill somewhat faster than he came up it ? 
Then let me select men whose guiding-star has been the good 
of their fellow-creatures, or the glory of God, and watch their 
peaceful useful end on that calm summit that they toiled so 
honestly to reach. The difference comes home to us. The 
moral is read only at the end of the story. Remorse rings it 
forever in the ears of the dying — often too long a-dying — man 
who has labored for himself. Peace reads it smilingly to him 
whose generous toil for others has brought its own reward. 

Sheridan had climbed with the stride of a giant, laughing at 
rocks, at precipices, at slippery water-courses. He had spread 
the wings of genius to poise himself withal, and gained one 
peak after another, while homelier worth was struggling mid- 
way, clutching the brambles and clinging to the ferns. He 
had, as Byron said in Sherry's days of decay, done the best in 
all he undertook, written the best comedy, best opera, best 
farce ; spoken the best parody, and made the best speech. 
Sheridan, when those words of the young poet were told him, 
shed tears. Perhaps the bitter thought struck him, that he 
had not led the best, but the icorst life ; that comedy, farce, 
opera, monody, and oration were nothing, nothing to a pure 
conscience and a peaceful old age ; that they could not save 
him from shame and poverty — from debt, disgrace, drunken- 
ness — from grasping, but long-cheated creditors, who dragged 
his bed from under the feeble, nervous, ruined old man. Poor 
Sherry ! his end was too bitter for us to cast one stone more 
upon him. Let it be noted that it was in the beginning of his 
decline, when, having reached the climax of all his ambition 
and completed his fame as a dramatist, orator, and wit, that 
the hand of Providence mercifully interposed to rescue this 
reckless man from his downfall. It smote him with that com- 
mon but powerful weapon — death. Those he best loved were 
torn from him, one after another, rapidly, and with little warn- 
ing. The Linleys, the " nest of nightingales," were all delicate 
as nightingales should be ; and it seemed as if this very time 
was chosen for their deaths, that the one erring soul — more 
precious, remember, than many just lives — might be called 
back. Almost within one year he lost his dear sister-in-law, 
the wife of his most intimate friend Tickell ; Maria Linlev, the 



372 THE FAIR, LOVING, NEGLECTED WIFE. 

last of the family ; his own wife, and his little daughter. One 
grief succeeded another so rapidly that Sheridan was utterly 
unnerved, utterly brought low by them ; but it was his wife's 
death that told most upon him. With that wife he had al- 
ways been the lover rather than the husband. She had mar- 
ried him in the days of his poverty, when her beauty was so 
celebrated that she might have wed whom she would. She 
had risen with him and shared his later anxieties. Yet she 
had seen him forget, neglect her, and seek other society. In 
spite of his tender affection for her and for his children, he had 
never made a home of their home. Vanity Fair had kept him 
ever flitting, and it is little to be wondered at that Mrs. Sheri- 
dan was sometimes tempted to fill up his place from among 
her many admirers.* Yet, in spite of calumny, she died with 
a fair fame. Decline had long pressed upon her, yet her last 
illness was too brief. In 1*792 she was taken away, still in the 
summer of her days, and with her last breath uttering her love 
for the man who had deserted her. His grief was terrible ; 
yet it passed, and wrought no change. He found solace in his 
beloved son, and yet more beloved daughter. A few months 
— and the little girl followed her mother. Again his grief 
was terrible : again passed and wrought no change. Yes, it 
did work some change, but not for the better : it drove him to 
the goblet ; and from that time we may date the confirmation 
of his habit of drinking. The solemn warnings had been un- 
heeded : they were to be repeated by a long-suffering God in 
a yet more solemn manner, which should touch him yet more 
nearly. His beautiful wife had been the one restraint upon 
his folly and his lavishness. Now she was gone, they burst 
out afresh, wilder than ever. 

For a while after these afflictions, which were soon com- 
pleted in the death of his most intimate friend and boyish 
companion, Tickell, Sheridan threw himself again into the 
commotion of the political world. But in this we shall not 
follow him. Three years after the death of his first wife he 
married again. He was again fortunate in his choice. Though 
now forty-four, he succeeded in winning the heart of a most 
estimable and charming young lady with a fortune of £5000. 
She must indeed have loved or admired the widower very 
much to consent to be the wife of a man so notoriously irreg- 
ular, to use a mild term, in his life. But Sheridan fascinated 
wherever he went, and young ladies like " a little wildness." 
His heart was always good, and where he gave it he gave it 
warmly, richly, fully. His second wife was Miss Esther Jane 

* Lord Edward Fitzgerald was one of the most devoted of these : he chose 
his wife, Pamela, because she resembled Mrs. Sheridan. 



DEBTS OF HONOR. 373 

Ogle, daughtei* of the Dean of "Winchester. She was given to 
him on condition of his settling in all £20,000 upon her — a 
wise proviso with such a spendthrift — and he had to raise the 
money, as usual. 

His political career was sufficiently brilliant, though his real 
fame as a speaker rests on his great oration at Hastings's trial. 
In 1806 he satisfied another point of his ambition, long de- 
sired, and was elected for the city of Westminster, which he 
had ardently coveted when Fox represented it. But a disso- 
lution threw him again on the mercy of the popular party ; 
and again he offered himself for Westminster ; but, in spite of 
all the efforts made for him, without success. He was return- 
ed, instead, for Ilchester. 

Meanwhile his difficulties increased ; extravagance, debt, 
want of enei'gy to meet both, brought him speedily into that 
position when a man accepts without hesitation the slightest 
offer of aid. The man who had had an income of £15,000 a 
year, and settled £20,000 on his wife, allowed a poor friend to 
pay a bill for £5 for him, and clutched eagerly at a £50 note 
when displayed to him by another. Extravagance is the fa- 
ther of meanness, and Sheridan was often mean in the readi- 
ness with which he accepted offers, and the anxiety with which 
he implored assistance. It is amusing in the present day to 
hear a man talk of " a debt of honor," as if all debts did not 
demand honor to pay them — as if all debts incurred without 
hope of repayment were not dishonorable. A story is told 
relative to the old-fashioned idea of " a debt of honor." A 
tradesman, to whom he had given a bill for £200, called on 
him for the amount. A heap of gold was lying on the table. 
" Don't look that way," cried Sheridan, after protesting that 
he had not a penny in the world, " that is to pay a debt of 
honor." The applicant, with some wit, tore up the bill he 
held. " Now, Mr. Sheridan," quoth he, " mine is a debt of 
honor too." It is to be hoped that Sherry handed him the 
money. 

The story of Gunter's bill is not so much to his credit. 
Hanson, an iron-monger, called upon him and pressed for pay- 
ment. A bill sent in by the famous confectioner was lying on 
the table. A thought struck the debtor, who had no means 
of getting rid of his importunate applicant. "You know 
Gunter ?" he asked. " One of the safest men in London," re- 
plied the iron-monger. " Then will you be satisfied if I give 
you his bill for the amount ?" " Certainly." Thereupon Sher- 
ry handed him the neatly-folded account and rushed from the 
room, leaving the creditor to discover the point of Mr. Sheri- 
dan's little fun. 



374 DKURY LANE BURNT. — THE OWNER'S SERENITY. 

Still Sheridan might have weathered through the storm. 
Drury Lane was a mine of wealth to him, and with a little 
care might have been really profitable. The lawsuits, the 
debts, the engagements upon it, all rose from his negligence 
and extravagance. But Old Drury was doomed. On the 24th 
of February, 1809, soon after the conclusion of the perform- 
ances, it was announced to be in flames. Rather it announced 
itself. In a few moments it was blazing — a royal bonfire. 
Sheridan was in the House of Commons at the time. The 
reddened clouds above London threw the glare back even to 
the windows of the House. The members ^rushed from their 
seats to see the unwonted light, and in consideration for Sheri- 
dan, an adjournment was moved. But he rose calmly, though 
sadly, and begged that no misfortune of his should interrupt 
the public business. His independence, he said — witty in the 
midst of his troubles — had often been questioned, but was now 
confirmed, for he had nothing more to depend upon. He then 
left the House, and repaired to the scene of conflagration. 

Not long after, Kelly found him sitting quite composed in 
" The Bedford," sipping his wine, as if nothing had happened. 
The musician expressed his astonishment at Mr. Sheridan's 
sang froid. " Surely," replied the wit, " you'll admit that a 
man has a right to take his wine by his own fireside." But 
Sherry was only drowning care, not disregarding it. The 
event was really too much for him, though perhaps he did not 
realize the extent of its effect at the time. In a word, all he 
had in the world went with the theatre. Nothing was left 
either for him or the principal shareholders. Yet he bore it 
all with fortitude, till he heard that the harpsichord, on which 
his first wife was wont to play, was gone too. Then he burst 
into tears. 

This fire was the opening of the shaft down which the great 
man sank rapidly. While his fortunes kept up, his spirits 
were not completely exhausted. He drank much, but as an 
indulgence rather than as a relief. Now it was by wine alone 
that he could even raise himself to the common requirements 
of conversation. He is described, before dinner, as depressed, 
nervous, and dull ; after dinner only did the old fire break out, 
the old wit blaze up, and Dick Sheridan was Dick Sheridan 
once more. He was, in fact, fearfully oppressed by the long- 
accumulated and never-to-be-wiped-off debts, for which he was 
now daily pressed. In quitting Parliament he resigned his 
sanctuary, and left himself an easy prey to the Jews and Gen- 
tiles, whom he had so long dodged and deluded with his ready 
ingenuity. Drury Lane, as we all know, was rebuilt, and the 
birth of the new house heralded with a prologue by Byron, 



THE WHITBREAD QUARREL. 375 

about as good as the one in "Rejected Addresses," the clever- 
est parodies ever written, and suggested by this very occasion. 
The building-committee having advertised for a prize prologue, 
Samuel Whitbread sent in his own attempt, in Avhich, as prob- 
ably in a hundred others, the new theatre was compared to a 
Phoenix rising out of the ashes of the old one. Sheridan said 
Whitbread's description of a Phcenix was excellent, for it was 
quite a poulterer 's description. 

This same Sam "Whitbread was now to figure conspicuous- 
ly in the life of Mr. Richard B. Sheridan. The ex-proprietor 
was found to have an interest in the theatre to the amount of 
£150,000 — not a trifle to be sneezed at; but he was now past 
sixty, and it need excite no astonishment that, even with all 
his liabilities, he was unwilling to begin again the cares of 
management, or mismanagement, which he had endured so 
many years. He sold his interest, in which his son Tom was 
joined, for £60,000. This sum would have cleared of? his 
debts and left him a balance sufficient to secure comfort for 
his old age. But it Avas out of the question that any money 
matters should go right with Dick Sheridan. Of the rights 
and wrongs of the quarrel between him and Whitbread, who 
was chairman of the committee for building the new theatre, 
I do not pretend to form an opinion. Sheridan was not nat- 
urally mean, though he descended to meanness when hard 
pressed — what man of his stamp does not ? Whitbread was 
truly friendly to him for a time. Sherry was always complain- 
ing that he was sued for debts he did not owe, and kept out 
of many that were due to him. Whitbread knew his man 
well, and if he withheld what was owing to him, may be ex- 
cused on the ground of real friendship. All I know is, that 
Sheridan and Whitbread quarreled ; that the former did not, 
or affirmed that he did not, receive the full amount of his claim 
on the property, and that, when what he had received was 
paid over to his principal creditors, there was little or nothing- 
left for my lord to spend in banquets to parliamentary friends 
and jorams of brandy in small coffee-houses. 

Because a man is a genius, he is not of necessity an upright, 
honest, ill-used, oppressed, and cruelly-entreated man. Genius 
plays the fool wittingly, and often enough quite knowingly, 
with its own interests. It is its privilege to do so, and no one 
has a right to complain. But then Genius ought to hold its 
tongue, and not make itself out a martyr, when it has had the 
dubious glory of defying common sense. If Genius despises 
gold, well and good, but when he has spurned it, he should not 
whine out that he is wrongfully kept from it. Poor Sherry 
may or may not have been right in the Whitbread quarrel ; 



37(5 ruined! 

lie has had his defenders, and I am not anxious of being num- 
bered among them ; but whatever were now his troubles were 
brought on by his own disregard of all that was right and 
beautiful in conduct. If he went down to the grave a pauper 
and a debtor, he had made his own bed, and in it he was to 
lie. 

Lie he did, wretchedly, on the most unhappy bed that old 
age ever lay in. There is little more of importance to chroni- 
cle of his latter days. The retribution came on slowly but 
terribly. The career of a ruined man is not a pleasant topic 
to dwell upon, and I leave Sheridan's misery for Mr. J. B. 
Gough to whine and roar over when he wants a shocking ex- 
ample. Sherry might have earned many a crown in that ca- 
pacity, if temperance oratory had been the passion of the day. 
Debt, disease, depravity — these words describe enough the 
downward career of his old age. To eat, still more to drink, 
was now the troublesome enigma of the quondam genius. I 
say quondam, for all the marks of that genius were now gone. 
One after another his choicest properties made their way to 
" my uncle's." The books went first, as if they could be most 
easily dispensed with ; the remnants of his plate followed ; 
then his pictures were sold ; and at last even the portrait of 
his first wife, by Reynolds, was left in pledge for a " farther 
remittance." 

The last humiliation arrived in time, and the associate of a 
prince, the eloquent organ of a party, the man who had enjoy- 
ed £15,000 a year, was carried off to a low sponging-house. 
His pride forsook him in that dismal and disgusting imprison- 
ment, and he wrote to Whitbread a letter which his defenders 
ought not to have published. He had his friends — stanch 
ones too — and they aided him. Peter Moore, iron-monger, and 
even Canning, lent him money and released him from time to 
time. For six years after the burning of the old theatre he 
continued to go down and down. Disease now attacked him 
fiercely. In the spring of 1816 he was fast waning toward ex- 
tinction. His day was past ; he had outlived his fame as a 
wit and social light ; he was forgotten by many, if not by 
most, of his old associates. He wrote to Rogers, " I am abso- 
lutely undone and broken-hearted." Poor Sherry! in spite 
of all thy faults, who is he whose morality is so stern that he 
can not shed one tear over thy latter days ! God forgive us, 
we are all sinners ; and if we weep not for this man's deficien- 
cy, how shall we ask tears when our day comes ? Even as I 
write I feel my hand tremble and my eyes moisten over the 
sad end of one whom I love, though he died before I was born. 
" They are going to put the carpets out of window," he wrote 



THE DEAD MAN ARRESTED. 377 

to Rogers, " and break into Mrs. S.'s room and take me. For 
God's sake let me see you !" See Mm ! — see one friend who 
could and would kelp him in his misery ! Oh ! happy may 
that man count himself who has never wanted that one friend, 
and felt the utter helplessness of that want ! Poor Sherry ! 
had he ever asked, or hoped, or looked for that Friend out of 
this world it had been better; for "the Lord thy God is a 
jealous God," and we go on seeking human friendship and 
neglecting the divine till it is too late. He found one hearty 
friend in his physician, Dr. Bain, when all others had forsaken 
him. The spirit of White's and Brookes's, the companion of 
a prince and a score of noblemen, the enlivener of every "fash- 
ionable" table, was forgotten by all but this one doctor. Let 
us read Moore's description : " A sheriff's officer at length ar- 
rested the dying man in his bed, and was about to carry him 
off, in his blankets, to a sponging-house, when Dr. Bain inter- 
fered." Who would live the life of revelry that Sheridan 
lived to have such an end ? A few days after, on the 7th of 
July, 1816, in his sixty-fifth year, he died. 

Peace ! there was not peace even in death, and the creditor 
pursued him even into the "waste wide" — even to the coffin. 
He was lying in state, when a gentleman in the deepest mourn- 
ing called, it is said, at the house, and introducing himself as 
an old and much attached friend of the deceased, begged to 
be allowed to look upon his face. The tears which rose in his 
eyes, the tremulousness of his quiet voice, the pallor of his 
mournful face, deceived the unsuspecting servant, who accom- 
panied him to the chamber of death, removed the lid of the 
coffin, turned down the shroud, and revealed features which 
had once been handsome, but long since rendered almost hid- 
eous by drinking. The stranger gazed with profound emo- 
tion, while he quietly drew from his pocket a bailiff's wand, 
and touching the corpse's face with it, suddenly altered his 
manner to one of considerable glee, and informed the servant 
that he had arrested the corpse in the king's name for a debt 
of £500. It was the morning of the funeral, which was to be 
attended by half the grandees of England, and in a few min- 
utes the mourners began to arrive. But the corpse was the 
bailiff's property till his claim was paid, and naught but the 
money would soften the iron capturer. Canning and Lord 
Sidmouth agreed to settle the matter, and over the coffin the 
debt was paid. 

Poor corpse! w T as it worth £500 — diseased, rotting as it was, 
and about to be given for nothing to mother earth? Was it 
worth the pomp of the splendid funeral and the grand hypoc- 
risy of grief with which it was borne to Westminster Abbey ? 



378 THE STORIES FIXED ON SHERIDAN. 

Was not rather the wretched old man, while he yet struggled 
on in life, worth this outlay, worth this show of sympathy? 
Folly ; not folly only — but a lie ! What recked the dead of 
the four noble pall-bearers — the Duke of Bedford, the Earl of 
Lauderdale, Earl Mulgrave, and the Bishop of London ? What 
good was it to him to be followed by two royal highnesses — 
the Dukes of York and Sussex — by two marquises, seven earls, 
three viscounts, five lords, a Canning, a lord mayor, and a whole 
regiment of honorables and right honorables, who now wore 
the livery of grief, when they had let him die in debt, in want, 
and in misery ? Far more, if the dead could feel, must he have 
been grateful for the honester tears of those two untitled men 
who had really befriended him to the last hour, and never aban- 
doned him, Mr. Rogers and Dr. Bain. But peace ; let him pass 
with nodding plumes and well-dyed horses to the great Wal- 
halla, and amid the dust of many a poet let the poet's dust find 
rest and honor, secure at last from the hand of the bailiff. There 
was but one nook unoccupied in Poets' Corner, and there they 
laid him. A simple marble was afforded by another friend with- 
out a title — Peter Moore. 

To a life like Sheridan's it is almost impossible to do justice 
in so narrow a space as I have here. He is one of those men 
who, not to be made out a whit better or worse than they are, 
demand a careful investigation of all their actions, or reported 
actions — a careful sifting of all the evidence for or against them, 
and a careful weeding of all the anecdotes told of them. This 
requires a separate biography. To give a general idea of the 
man, we must be content to give that which he inspired in a 
general acquaintance. Many of his " mots," and more of the 
stories about him, may have been invented for him, but they 
would scarcely have been fixed on Sheridan if they had not fit- 
ted more or less his character : I have therefore given them with- 
out inquiry as to their veracity. I might have given a hundred 
more, but I have let alone those anecdotes which did not seem 
to illustrate the character of the man. Many another good sto- 
ry is told of him, and we must content ourselves with one or 
two. Take one that is characteristic of his love of fun. 

Sheridan is accosted by an elderly gentleman, who has for- 
gotten the name of a street to which he wants to go, and who 
informs him precisely that it is an out-of-the-way name. 

" Perhaps, sir, you mean John Street ?" says Sherry, all in- 
nocence. 

" No, an unusual name." 

" It can't be Charles Street ?" 

Impatience on the part of the old gentleman. 

" King Street ?" suggests the cruel wit. 



EXTEMPORE WIT AND INVETERATE TALKERS. 379 

" I tell you, sir, it is a street with a very odd name !" 

" Bless me, is it Queen Street ?" 

Irritation on the part of the old gentleman. 

" It must be Oxford Street," cries Sheridan, as if inspired. 

" Sir, I repeat," very testily, " that it is a very odd name. 
Every one knows Oxford Street !" 

Sheridan appears to be thinking. 

"An odd name! Oh! ah! just so; Piccadilly, of course?" 

Old gentleman bounces away in disgust. 

" Well, sir," Sherry calls after him, " I envy you your admi- 
rable memory !" 

His wit was said to have been prepared, like his speeches, 
and he is even reported to have carried his book of mots in his 
pocket, as a young lady of the middle class might, but seldom 
does, carry her book of etiquette into a party. But some of 
his wit was no doubt extempore. 

When arrested for non-attendance to a call in the House, 
soon after the change of ministry, he exclaimed, "How hard 
to be no sooner out of office than into custody !" 

He was not an inveterate talker, like Macaulay, Sydney 
Smith, or Jeffrey: he seems rather to have aimed at a strik- 
ing effect in all that he said. When found tripping, he had a 
clever knack of getting out of the difficulty. In the Hastings 
speech he complimented Gibbon as a "luminous" writer; 
questioned on this, he replied archly, " I said voluminous." 

I can't afford to be voluminous on Sheridan, and so I quit 
him. 



BEAU BRUMMELL. 

It is astonishing to what a number of insignificant things 
high art has been applied, and with what success. It is the 
vice of high civilization to look for it and reverence it, where 
a ruder age would only laugh at its employment. Crime and 
cookery, especially, have been raised into sciences of late, and 
the professors of both received the amount of honor due to 
their acquirements. Who would be so naive as to sneer at 
the author of " The Art of Dining ?" or who so ungentlemanly 
as not to pity the sorrows of a pious baronet, whose devotion 
to the noble art of appropriation was shamefully rewarded 
with accommodation gratis on board one of Her Majesty's 
transport-ships ? The disciples of Ude have left us the literary 
results of their studies, and one at least, the graceful Alexis 
Soyei*, is numbered among our public benefactors. We have 
little doubt that as the art, vulgarly called " embezzlement," 
becomes more and more fashionable, as it does every day, we 
shall have a work on the "Art of Appropriation." It is a pity 
that Brummell looked down upon literature : poor literature ! 
it had a hard struggle to recover the slight, for we are con- 
vinced there is not a work more wanted than the "Art of 
Dressing," and " George the Less" was almost the last profess- 
or of that elaborate science. 

If the maxim, that " whatever is worth doing at all is worth 
doing well," hold good, Beau Brummell must be regarded in 
the light of a great man. That dressing is worth doing at all, 
every body but a Fiji Islander seems to admit, for every body 
does it. If, then, a man succeeds in dressing better than any 
body else, it follows that he is entitled to the most universal 
admiration. 

But there was another object to which this great man con- 
descended to apply the principles of high art — I mean affecta- 
tion. How admirably he succeeded in this his life will show. 
But can we doubt that he is entitled to our greatest esteem 
and heartiest gratitude for the studies he pursued with unre- 
mitting patience in these two useful branches, when we find 
that a prince of the blood delighted to honor, and the richest, 
noblest, and most distinguished men of half a century ago were 
proud to know him ? We are writing, then, of no common 
man, no mere beau, but of the greatest professor of two of the 



382 "BUCK BRUMMELL," AT ETON. 

most popular sciences — Dress and Affectation. Let us speak 
with reverence of this wonderful genius. 

George Brummell was a " self-made man." That is, all that 
nature, the tailors, stags, and padding had not made of him, 
he made for himself — his name, his fame, his fortune, and his 
friends — and all these were great. The author of " Self-help" 
has most unaccountably omitted all mention of him, and most 
erroneously, for if there ever was a man who helped himself, 
and no one else, it was " very sincerely yours, George Brum- 
mell." 

The founder of the noble house of Brummell, the grandfather 
of our hero, was either a treasury porter, or a confectioner, or 
something else.* At any rate he let lodgings in Bury Street, 
and whether from the fact that his wife did not purloin her 
lodgers' tea and sugar, or from some other cause, he managed 
to ingratiate himself with one of them — who afterward became 
Lord Liverpool — so thoroughly, that through his influence he 
obtained for his son the post of Private Secretary to Lord 
North. Nothing could have been more fortunate, except, 
perhaps, the son's next move, which was to take in marriage 
the daughter of Richardson, the owner of a well-known lot- 
tery-office. Between the lottery of office and the lottery of 
love, Brummell pere managed to make a very good fortune. 
At his death he left as much as £65,000 to be divided among 
his three children — Raikes says as much as £30,000 apiece — 
so that the Beau, if not a fool, ought never to have been a 
pauper. 

George Bryan Brummell, the second son of this worthy, 
honored by his birth the 7th of June, 1778. No anecdotes of 
his childhood are preserved, except that he once cried because 
he could not eat any more damson tart. In later years he 
would probably have thought damson tart "very vulgar." 
He first turns up at Eton at the age of twelve, and even there 
commences his distinguished career, and is known as " Buck 
Brummell." The boy showed himself decidedly father to the 
man here. Master George was not vulgar enough, nor so im- 
prudent, it may be added, as to fight, row, or play cricket, but 
he distinguished himself by the introduction of a gold buckle 
in the white stock, by never being flogged, and by his ability 
in toasting cheese. We do not hear much of his classical at- 
tainments. 

The very gentlemanly youth was in due time passed on to 
Oriel College, Oxford. Here he distinguished himself by a 

* Mr. Jesse says that the Beau's grandfather was a servant of Mr. Charles 
Monson, brother to the first Lord Monson. 



INVESTING HIS CAPITAL. 383 

studied indifference to college discipline and an equal dislike 
to studies. He condescended to try for the Newdigate Prize 
poem, -but his genius leaned far more to the turn of a coat- 
collar than that of a verse, and, unhappily for the British poets, 
their ranks were not to be dignified by the addition of this 
illustrious man. The Newdigate was given to another; and 
so, to punish Oxford, the competitor left it and poetry togeth- 
er, after having adorned the old quadrangle of Oriel for less 
than a year. 

He was now a boy of seventeen, and a very fine boy, too. 
To judge from a portrait taken in later life, he was not strictly 
handsome ; but he is described as tall, well built, and of a slight 
and graceful figure. Added to this, he had got from Eton and 
Oxford, if not much learning, many a well-born friend, and he 
was toady enough to cultivate those of better and dismiss 
those of less distinction. He was through life a celebrated 
"cutter," and Brummell's cut was as much admired — by all 
but the cuttee — as Brjummell's coat. Then he had some 
£25,000 as capital, and how could he best invest it? He con- 
sulted no stock-broker on this weighty point ; he did not even 
buy a shilling book of advice that we have seen advertised for 
those who don't know what to do with their money. The 
question was answered in a moment by the young worldling 
of sixteen : he would enter a crack regiment and invest his 
guineas in the thousand per cents, of fashionable life. 

His namesake, the Regent, was now thirty-two, and had 
spent those years of his life in acquiring the honorary title 
of the " first gentleman of Europe," by every act of folly, de- 
bauch, dissipation, and degradation which a prince can con- 
veniently perpetrate. He was the hero of London society, 
which adored and backbit him alternately, and he was pre- 
cisely the man whom the boy Brummell would worship. The 
Regent was colonel of a famous regiment of fops — the 10th 
Hussars. It was the most expensive, the most impertinent, 
the best-dressed, the worst-moraled regiment in the British 
army. Its officers, many of them titled, all more or less dis- 
tinguished in the trying campaigns of London seasons, were 
the intimates of the Prince Colonel. Brummell aspired to a 
cornetcy in this brilliant regiment, and obtained it ; nor that 
alone ; he secured, by his manners, or his dress, or his impu- 
dence, the favor and companionship — friendship we can not 
say — of the prince who commanded it. 

By this step his reputation was made, and it was only neces- 
sary to keep it up. He had an immense fund of good-nature, 
and, as long as his money lasted, of good spirits, too. Good 
sayings — that is, witty if not wise — are recorded of him, and 



384 YOUNG CORNET BRUMMELL. 

his friends pronounce him a charming companion. Introduced, 
therefore, into the highest circles in England, he could scarcely 
fail to succeed. Young Cornet Brummell became a great fa- 
vorite with the fair. 

His rise in the regiment was of course rapid : in three yeavs 
he was at the head of a troop. The onerous duties of a mil- 
itary life, which vacillated between Brighton and London, and 
consisted chiefly in making one's self agreeable in the mess- 
room, were too much for our hero. He neglected parade, or 
arrived too late : it was such a bore to have to dress in a hur- 
ry. It is said that he knew the troop he commanded only by 
the peculiar nose of one of the men, and that when a transfer 
of men had once been made, rode* up to the wrong troop, and 
supported his. mistake by pointing to the nose in question. 
No fault, however, was found with the Regent's favorite, and 
Brummell might have risen to any rank if he could have sup- 
ported the terrific labor of dressing for parade. Then, too, 
there came wars and rumors of wars, and our gallant captain 
shuddered at the vulgarity of shedding blood : the supply of 
smelling-salts would never have been liberal enough to keep 
him from fainting on the. battle-field. It is said, too, that the 
regiment was ordered to Manchester. Could any thing be 
more gross or more ill-bred ? The idea of figuring before the 
wives and daughters of cotton-spinners was too fearful ; and 
from one cause or another our brave young captain determined 
to retire, which he did in 1798. 

It was now, therefore, that he commenced the profession of 
a beau, and as he is the Prince of Beaux, as his patron was the 
Beau of Princes, and as his fame has spread to France and 
Germany, if only as the inventor of the trowser ; and as there 
is no man who on getting up in the morning does not put on 
his clothes with more or less reflection as to whether they are 
the right ones to put on, and as beaux have existed since the 
days of the emperor of beaux, Alexander the Macedonian, and 
will probably exist to all time, let us rejoice in the high honor 
of being permitted to describe how this illustrious genius 
clothed his poor flesh, and made the most of what God had 
given him — a body and legs. 

The private life of Brummell would in itself serve as a book 
of manners and habits. The two were his profoundest study ; 
but, alas ! his impudence marred the former, and the latter 
can scarcely be imitated in the present day. Still as a great 
example he is yet invaluable, and must be described in all 
detail. 

His morning toilet was a most elaborate affair. Never 
was Brummell guilty of deshabille. Like a true man of busi- 



THE TOILET. 385 

ness, he devoted the best and earliest hours — and many of 
them too — to his profession, namely — dressing. His dressing- 
room was a studio, in which he daily compared that elaborate 
portrait of George Brnmmell which was to be exhibited for a 
few hours in the club-rooms and drawing-rooms of town, only 
to be taken to pieces again, and again made up for the even- 
ing. Charles \. delighted to resort of a morning to the studio 
of Vandyck, and watch his favorite artist's progress. The 
Regent George was no less devoted to art, for Ave are assured 
by Mr. Raikes that he often visited his favorite beau in the 
morning to watch his toilet, and would sometimes stay so 
late that he would send his hoi-ses away, insisting on Brum- 
mell giving him a quiet dinner, " which generally ended in a 
deep potation." 

There are, no doubt, many fabulous myths floating about 
concerning this illustrious man ; and his biographer, Captain 
Jesse, seems anxious to defend him from the absurd stories of 
French writers, who asserted that he employed two glovers to 
cover his hands, to one of whom were intrusted the thumbs, 
to the other the fingers and hand, and three barbers to dress 
his hair, while his boots were polished with champagne, his 
cravats designed by a celebrated portrait painter, and so forth. 
These may be pleasant inventions, but Captain Jesse's own 
account of his toilet, even when the Beau was broken, and 
living in elegant poverty abroad, is quite absurd enough to 
render excusable the ingenious exaggerations of the foreign 
writer. 

The batterie de toilette, we are told, was of silver, and in- 
cluded a spitting-dish, for its owner said "he could not spit 
into clay." Napoleon shaved himself, but Brummell was not 
quite great enough to do that, just as my Lord So-and-So 
walks to church on Sunday, while his neighbor, the Manches- 
ter millionaire, can only arrive there in a chariot and pair. 

His ablutions took no less than two whole hours ! What 
knowledge might have been gained, what good done in the 
time he devoted to rubbing his lovely person with a hair 
glove ! Cleanliness was, in fact, Brummell's religion ; perhaps 
because it is generally set down as " next to godliness," a 
proximity with which the Beau was quite satisfied, for he never 
attempted to pass on to that next stage. Poor fool, he might 
rub every particle of moisture off the skin of his body — he 
might be clean as a kitten — but he could not and did not purify 
his mind with all this friction ; and the man who would have 
fainted to see a black speck upon his shirt, was not at all shock- 
ed at the indecent conversation in which he and his compan- 
ions occasionally indulged. 

R 



386 "creasing down." 

The body cleansed, the face had next to be brought up as 
near perfection as nature would allow. With a small looking- 
glass in one hand, and tweezers in the other, he carefully re- 
moved the tiniest hairs that he could discover on his cheeks or 
chin, enduring the pain like a martyr. 

Then came the shirt, which was in his palmy days changed 
three times a day, and then in due course the great business 
of the cravat. Captain Jesse's minute account of the process 
of tying this can sm*ely be relied on, and presents one of the 
most ludicrous pictures of folly and vanity that can be imag- 
ined. Had Brummell never lived, and a novelist or play-writer 
described the toilet which Captain Jesse affirms to have been 
his daily achievement, he would have had the critics about him 
with the now common phrase — " This book is a tissue, not only 
of improbabilities, but of actual impossibilities." The collar, 
then, was so large, that in its natural condition it rose high 
above the wearer's head, and some ingenuity was required to 
reduce it by delicate folds to exactly that height which the 
Beau judged to be correct. Then came the all-majestic white 
neck-tie, a foot in breadth. It is not to be supposed that 
Brummell had the neck of a swan or a camel — far from it. The 
worthy fool had now to undergo, with admirable patience, the 
mysterious process known to our papas as " creasing down." 
The head was thrown back, as if ready for a dentist ; the stiff 
white tie applied to the throat, and gradually wrinkled into 
half its actual breath by the slow downward movement of the 
chin. When all was done, we can imagine that comfort was 
saci'ificed to elegance, as it was then considered, and that the 
sudden appearance of Venus herself could not have induced 
the deluded individual to turn his head in a hurry. 

It is scarcely profitable to follow this lesser deity into all the 
details of his self-adornment. It must suffice to say that he 
affected an extreme neatness and simplicity of dress, every item 
of which was studied and discussed for many an hour. In the 
mornings he was still guilty of hessians and pantaloons, or 
" tops" and buckskins, with a blue coat and buff" waistcoat. 
The costume is not so ancient, but that one may tumble now 
and then on a country squire who glories in it and denounces 
us juveniles as " bears" for want of a similar precision. Poor 
Brummell, he cordially hated the country squires, and would 
have wanted rouge for a week if he could have dreamed that 
his pet attire would, some fifty years later, be represented only 
by one^ of that class which he was so anxious to exclude from 
Watief's. 

But it was in the evening that he displayed his happy inven- 
tion of the trowser, or rather its introduction from Germany. 



A GREAT GENTLEMAN. 387 

This article he wore very tight to the leg, and buttoned over 
the ankle, exactly as we see it in old prints of " the fashion." 
Then came the wig, and on that the hat. It is a vain and 
thankless task to defend Brunimell from the charge of being a 
dandy. If one proof of his devotion to dress were wanted, it 
would be the fact that this hat, once stuck jauntily on one side 
of the wig, was never removed in the street even to salute a 
lady — so that, inasmuch as he sacrificed his manners to his ap- 
pearance, he may be fairly set down as a fop. 

The perfect artist could not be expected to be charitable to 
the less successful. Dukes and princes consulted him on the 
make of their coats, and discussed tailors with him with as 
much solemnity as divines might dispute on a mystery of re- 
ligion. Brunimell did not spare them. "Bedford," said he, 
to the duke of that name, fingering a new garment which his 
grace had submitted to his inspection, " do you call this thing 
a coat?" Again, meeting a noble acquaintance who wore 
shoes in the morning, he stopped and asked him what he had 
got upon his feet. " Oh ! shoes are they ?" quoth he, with a 
well-bred sneer, "I thought they were slippers." He was 
even ashamed of his own brother, and when the latter came 
to town, begged him to keep to the back streets till his new 
clothes were sent home. Well might his friend the Regent say, 
that he was " a mere tailor's dummy to hang clothes upon." 

But in reality Brummell was more. He had some sharpness 
and some taste. But the former was all brought out in Sneers, 
and the latter in snuff-boxes. His whole mind could have 
been put into one of these. He had a splendid collection of 
them, and was famous for the grace with which he opened the 
lid of his box with the thumb of the hand that carried it, while 
he delicately took his pinch with two fingers of the other. 
This and his bow were his chief acquirements, and his reputa- 
tion for manners was based on the distinction of his manner. 
He could not drive in a public conveyance, but he could be 
rude to a well-meaning lady ; he never ate vegetables — one pea 
he confessed to — but he did not mind borrowing from his 
friends money which he knew he could never return. He was 
a great gentleman, a gentleman of his patron's school — in 
short, a well-dressed snob. But one thing is due to Brum- 
mell : he made the assumption of being " a gentleman" so 
thoroughly ridiculous that few men of keen sense care now for 
the title : at least, not as a class distinction. Nor is it to be 
wondered at ; when your tailor's assistant is " a gentleman," 
and would be mightily disgusted at being called any thing 
else, you, with your indomitable pride of caste, can scarcely 
rare for the patent . 



388 ANECDOTES OF BEUMMELL. 

Brummell's claim to the title was based on his walk, his 
coat, his cravat, and the grace with which he indulged, as 
Captain Jesse delightfully calls it, "the nasal pastime" of tak- 
ing snuff. All the rest was impudence; and many are the 
anecdotes — most of them familiar as household words — which 
are told of his impertinence. The story of Mrs. Johnson- 
Thompson is one of those oft-told tales, which, from having 
become Joe Millers, have gradually passed out of date and 
been almost forgotten. Two rival party-givers rejoiced in the 
aristocratic names of Johnson and Thompson. The former 
lived near Finsbury, the latter near Grosvenor Square, and 
Mrs. Thompson was somehow sufficiently fashionable to expect 
the Regent himself at her assemblies. Brummell, among other 
impertinencies, was fond of going where he was not invited or 
wanted. The two rivals gave a ball on the same evening, and 
a card was sent to the Beau by her of Finsbury. He chose 
to go to the Grosvenor Square house, in hopes of meeting the 
Regent, then his foe. Mrs. Thompson was justly disgusted, 
and with a vulgarity quite deserved by the intruder, told him 
he was not invited. The Beau made a thousand apologies, 
hummed, hawed, and drew a card from his pocket. It was 
the rival's invitation, and was indignantly denounced. " Dear 
me, how very unfortunate," said the Beau, "but you know 
Johnson and Thompson — I mean Thompson and Johnson — 
are so very much alike. Mrs. Johnson-Thompson, I wish you 
a very good-evening." 

Perhaps there is no vulgarity greater than that of rallying 
people on their surnames, but our exquisite gentleman had not 
wit enough to invent one superior to such a puerile amusement. 
Thus, on one occasion, he woke up at three in the morning a 
certain Mr. Snodgrass, and when the worthy put his head out 
of the window in alarm, said quietly, " Pray, sir, is your name 
Snodgrass ?" " Yes, sir, it is Snodgrass." " Snodgrass — Snod- 
grass — it is a very singular name. Good-by, Mr. Snodgrass.'''' 
There was more wit in his remark to Poodle Byng, a well- 
known puppy, whom he met one day driving in the Park with 
a French dog in his curricle. " Ah !" cried the Beau, " how 
d'ye do, Byng ? a family vehicle, I see." 

It seems incredulous to modern gentlemen that such a man 
should have been tolerated even at a club. Take, for instance, 
his vulgar treatment of Lord Mayor Combe, whose name we 
still see with others over many a public-house in London, and 
who was then a most prosperous brewer and thriving gambler. 
At Brookes's one evening the Beau and the Brewer were play- 
ing at the same table : " Come, Mash-tub" ci-ied the " gentle- 
man," " what do you set ?" Mash-tub unresentingly set a pony, 



" DON'T FORGET, BRUM — GOOSE AT FOUR !" 389 

and the Beau won twelve of him in succession. Pocketing his 
cash, he made him a bow, and exclaimed, " Thank you, Alder- 
man, in future I shall drink no porter but yours." But Combe 
was worthy of his namesake, Shakspeare's friend, and answered 
very aptly, " I wish, sir, that every other blackguard in London 
would tell me the same." 

Then again, after ruining a young fool of fortune at the ta- 
bles, and being reproached by the youth's father for leading 
his son astray, he replied with charming affectation, " Why, 
sir, I did all I could for him. I once gave him my arm all the 
way from White's to Brookes's !" 

When Brummell really wanted a dinner, while at Calais, he 
could not give up his impertinence for the sake of it. Lord 
Westmoreland called on him, and, perhaps, out of compassion, 
asked him to diue at three o'clock with him. " Your lordship 
is very kind," said the Beau, " but really I could not feed at 
such an hour." Sooner or later he was glad to feed with any 
one who was toady enough to ask him. He was once placed 
in a delightfully awkward position from having accepted the 
invitation of a charitable but vulgar-looking Britisher at Ca- 
lais. He was walking with Lord Sefton, when the individual 
passed and nodded familiarly. "Who's your friend, Brum- 
mell ?" " Not mine, he must be bowing to you." But pres- 
ently the man passed again, and this time was cruel enough 
to exclaim, "Don't forget, Brum, don't forget — goose at four!" 
The poor Beau must have wished the earth to open under him. 
He was equally imprudent in the way in which he treated old 
acquaintance who arrived at the town to which he had retreat- 
ed, and of whom he was fool enough to be ashamed. He gen- 
erally took away their characters summarily, but on one occa- 
sion was frightened almost out of his wits by being called to 
account for this conduct. An officer who had lost his nose in 
an engagement in the Peninsula called on him, and in very 
strong terms requested to know why the Beau had reported 
that he was a retired hatter. His manner alarmed the rascal, 
who apologized, and protested that there must be a mistake ; 
he had never said so. The officer retired, and as he was go- 
ing, Brummell added, " Yes, it must be a mistake, for now I 
think of it, I never dealt with a hatter without a nose." 

So much for the good-breeding of this friend of George IV. 
and the Duke of York. 

His affectation was quite as great as his impudence ; and 
he won the reputation of fastidiousness — nothing gives more 
prestige by dint of being openly rude. No hospitality or kind- 
ness melted him, when he thought he could gain a march. At 
one dinner, not liking the champagne, he called to the servant 



390 OFFERS OF INTIMACY RESENTED. 

to give him " some more of that cider :" at another, to which 
he was invited in days when a dinner was a chanty to him, 
after helping himself to a wing of capon, and trying a morsel 
of it, he took it up in his napkin, called to his dog — he was 
generally accompanied by a puppy, even to parties, as if one 
at a time were not enough — and presenting it to him, said 
aloud, " Here, Atons, try if you can get your teeth through 
that, for I'm d— d if I can !" 

To the last he resented offers of intimacy from those whom 
he considered his inferiors, and as there are ladies enough ev- 
ery where, he had ample opportunity for administering rebuke 
to those who pressed into his society. On one occasion he 
was sauntering with a friend at Caen under the window of a 
lady who longed for nothing more than to have the great ar- 
biter elegantiamm at her house. When seeing him beneath, 
she put her head out, and called out to him, " Good-evening, 
Mr. Brummell, won't you come up and take tea ?" The Beau 
Looked up with extreme severity expressed on his face, and 
replied, " Madam, you take medicine — you take a walk — you 
take a liberty — but you drink tea," and walked on, having, it 
may be hoped, cured the lady of her admiration. 

In the life of such a man there could not of course be mucli 
striking incident. He lived for " society," and the whole of 
his story consists in his rise and fall in that narrow world. 
Though admired and sought after by the women — so much so 
that at his death his chief assets were locks of hair, the only 
things he could not have turned into money — he never mar- 
ried. Wedlock might have sobered him, and made him a more 
sensible, if not more respectable, member of society, but his 
advances toward matrimony never brought him to the crisis. 
He accounted for one rejection in his usual way, "What could 
I do, my dear fellar" he lisped, " when I actually saw Lady 
Mary eat cabbage ?" At another time he is said to have in- 
duced some deluded young creature to elope with him from a 
ball-room, but managed the affair so ill, that the lovers (?) were 
caught in the next street, and the affair came to an end. He 
wrote rather ecstatic love-letters to Lady Marys and Miss 

s, gave married ladies advice on the treatment of their 

spouses, and was tender to various widows, but though he 
went on in this way through life, he was never, it would seem, 
in love, from the mere fact that he was incapable of passion. 

Perhaps he was too much of a woman to care much for 
women. He was certainly egregiously effeminate. About the 
only creatures he could love were poodles. When one of his 
dogs, from overfeeding, was taken ill, he sent for two dog- 
doctors, and consulted verv s;ravelv with them on the reme- 



BEUMMELL OUT HUNTING. 391 

dies to be applied. The canine physicians came to the conclu- 
sion that she must be bled. " Bled !" said Brummell, in hor- 
ror ; " I shall leave the room : inform me when the operation 
is over." When the dog died, he shed tears — probably the 
only ones he had shed since childhood ; and though at that 
time receiving money from many an old friend in England, 
complained, with touching melancholy, " that he had lost the 
only friend he had !" His grief lasted three whole days, dur- 
ing which he shut himself up, and would see no one ; but we 
are not told that he ever thus mourned over any human being. 

His eifeininacy was also shown in his dislike to field-sports. 
His shooting exploits were confined to the murder of a pair of 
pet pigeons perched on a roof, while he confessed, as regards 
hunting, that it was a bore to get up so early in the -morning 
only' to have one's boots and leathers splashed by galloping 
farmers. However, minting was a fashion, and Brummell must 
needs appear to hunt. He therefore kept a stud of hunters, 
in his better days, near Belvoir, the Duke of Rutland's, where 
he was a frequent visitor, and if there was a near meet, would 
ride out in pink and tops to see the hounds break cover, fol- 
low through a few gates, and return to the more congenial at- 
mosphere of the drawing-room. He, however, condescended 
to bring his taste to bear on the hunting-dress ; and, it is said, 
introduced white tops instead of the ancient mahoganies. That 
he could ride there seems reason to believe, but it is equally 
probable that he was afraid to do so. His valor was certainly 
composed almost entirely of its " better part," and indeed had 
so much prudence in it that it may be doubted if there was 
any of the original stock left. Once when he had been taking 
away somebody's character, the " friend" of the maligned gen- 
tleman entered his apartment, and very menacingly demanded 
satisfaction for his principal, unless an apology were tendered 
"in five minutes." "Five minutes!" answered the exquisite, 
as pale as death, " five seconds, or sooner if you like." 

Brummell was no fool, in spite of his follies. Pie had tal- 
ents of a mediocre kind, if he had chosen to make a better use 
of them. Yet the general opinion was not in favor of his wis- 
dom. He quite deserved Sheridan's cool satire for his affecta- 
tion, if not for his want of mind. 

The Wit and the Beau met one day at Charing Cross, and 
it can well be imagined that the latter was rather disgusted 
at being seen so far east of St. James's Street, and drawled out 
to Sheridan, " Sherry, my clear boy, don't mention that you 
saw me in this filthy part of the town, though, perhaps, I am 
rather severe, for his Grace of Northumberland resides some- 
where about this spot, if I don't mistake. The fact is, my dear 



392 ANECDOTE OF SHERIDAN AND BKUMMELL. 

boy, I have been in the d — d City, to the Bank ; I wish they 
would remove it to the West End, for re-all-y it is quite a bore 
to go to such a place ; more particularly as one can not be seen 
in one's own equipage beyond Somerset House," etc., etc., etc., 
in the Brummellian style. 

" Nay, my good fellow," was the answer to this peroration, 
r" traveling from the East? impossible!" 

" Why, my dear boy, why ?" 

" Because the wise men came from the East." 

" So then, sa-ar, you think me a fool ?" 

" By no means ; I know you to be one," quoth Sherry, and 
turned away. It is due to both the parties to this anecdote 
to state that it is quite apocryphal, and rests on the slenderest 
authority. However, whether fool or not, Brummell has one 
certain, though small, claim upon certain small readers. Were 
you born in a modern generation, when scraps of poetry were 
forbidden in your nursery, and no other pabulum was offered 
to your infant stomach, but the rather dull biographies of 
rather dull, though very upright men ? — if so, I pity you. Old 
airs of a jaunty jig-like kind are still haunting the echoes of 
my brain. Among them is — 

"The butterfly was a gentleman, 
Which nobody can refute : 
He left his lady-love at home, 
And roamed in a velve( suit." 

I rempmber ofteti to have ruminated over this character of 
an innocent, and, I believe, calumniated insect. He was a gen- 
tleman, and the consequences thereof were twofold : he aban- 
doned the young woman who had trusted her affections to him, 
and attired his person in a complete costume of the best Ly- 
ons silk-velvet — not the proctor's velvet, which Theodore felt 
with thumb and finger, impudently asking, "how much a 
yard?" I secretly resolved to do the same as Mr. Butterfly 
when I came of age. But the said Mr. Butterfly had a varied 
and somewhat awful history, all of which was narrated in va- 
rious ditties chanted by my nurse. I could not quite join in 
her vivid assertion that she would 

"Be a butterfly, 
Born in a bower, 
Christened in a tea-pot, 
And dead in an hour." 

iEtat. four, life is dear, and the idea of that early demise was 
far from welcome to me. I privily agreed that I would not 
be a butterfly. But there was no end to the history of this 
very inconstant insect in our nursery lore. We didn't care a 
drop of honey for Dr. Watts's " Busy Bee ;" we infinitely pre- 



THE BEAU'S POETICAL EFFORTS. 393 

ferred the account — not in the "Morning Post" — of the "But- 
terfly's Ball" and the " Grasshopper's Feast ;" and few, per- 
haps, have ever given children more pleasures of imagination 
than William Roscoe, its author. There were some among us, 
however, who were already being weaned to a knowledge of 
life's mysterious changes, and we sought the third volume of 
the romance of the flitting gaudy thing in a little poem called 
" The Butterfly's Funeral." 

Little dreamed we, when in our pretty little song-books we 
saw the initial " B." at the bottom of these verses, that a real 
human butterfly had written them, and that they conveyed a 
solemn prognostication of a fate that was not his. Little we 
dreamed, as we lisped out the verses, that the " gentleman who 
roamed in a" not velvet but "plum-colored suit," according to 
Lady Hester Stanhope, was the illustrious George Brummell. 
The Beau wrote these trashy little rhymes — pretty in their 
way — and, since I was once a child, and learnt them off by 
heart, I will not cast a stone at them. Brummell indulged in 
such trifling poetizing, but never went farther. It is a pity he 
did not write his memoirs ; they would have added a valuable 
page to the history of " Vanity Fair." 

Brummell's London glory lasted from 1798 to 1816. His 
chief club was Watier's. It was a superb assemblage of game- 
sters and fops — knavejs and fools ; and it is difficult to say 
which element predominated. For a time Brummell was mon- 
arch there ; but his day of reckoning came at last. Byron and 
Moore, Sir Henry Mildmay and Mr. Pierrepoint, were among 
the numbers. Play ran high there, and Brummell once won 
nearly as much as his squandered patrimony, £26,000. Of 
course he not only lost it again, but much more — indeed his 
whole capital. It was after some heavy loss that he was walk- 
ing home through Berkeley Street with Mr. Raikes, when he 
saw something glittering in the gutter, picked it up, and found 
it to be a crooked sixpence. Like all small-minded men, he 
had a great fund of superstition, and he wore the talisman of 
good luck for some time. For two years, we are told, after 
this finding of treasure-trove, success attended him in play — 
macao, the very pith of hazard, was the chief game at Watier's 
— and he attributed it all to the sixpence. At last he lost it, 
and luck turned against him. So goes the story. It is proba- 
bly much more easily accountable. Few men played honestly 
in those days without losing to the dishonest, and we have no 
reason to charge the Beau with malpractice. However this 
may be, his losses at play first brought about his ruin. The 
Jews were, of course, resorted to ; and if Brummell did not, 
like Charles Fox, keep a Jerusalem Chamber, it was only be- 

R 2 



39-i THE BREACH WITH THE PBINCE OF WALES. 

cause the sum total of bis fortune was pretty well known to 

the money-lenders. 

"Then came the change — the check, the fall: 
Pain rises up — old pleasures pall. 
There is one remedy for all." 

This remedy was the crossing of the Channel, a crossing swept 
by beggars, who levy a heavy toll on those who pass over it. 

The decline of the Beau was rapid, but not without its eclat. 
A breach with his royal patron led the way. It is presumed 
that every reader of these volumes has heard the famous story 
of " Wales, ring the bell !" but not all may know its particu- 
lars. 

A deep impenetrable mystery haugs over this story. Per- 
haps some German of the twenty-first century — some future 
Gifford, or who not — will put his wits to work to solve the 
riddle. In very sooth il ne vaut pas la chandelle. A quarrel 
did take place between George the Prince and George the 
Less, but of its causes no living mortal is cognizant : we can 
only give the received versions. It appears, then, that dining 
with H. R. H. the Prince of Wales, Master Brummell asked 
him to ring the bell. Considering the intimacy between them, 
and that the Regent often sacrificed his dignity to his amuse- 
ment, there was nothing extraordinary in this. But it is added 
that the Prince did ring the bell in question — unhappy bell to 
jar so between two such illustrious friends ! — and when the 
servant came, ordered " Mr. Brummell's carriage !" Another 
version palms off the impertinence on a drunken midshipman, 
who, being related to the Comptroller of the Household, had 
been invited to dinner by the Regent. Another yet states that 
Brummell, being asked to ring the said bell, replied, 'Your 
Royal Highness is close to it." No one knows the truth of 
the legend, any more than whether Homer was a man or a 
myth. It surely does not matter. The friends quarreled, and 
perhaps it was time they should do so, for they had never im- 
proved one another's morals ; but it is only fair to the Beau to 
add that he always denied the whole affair, and that he himself 
gave as the cause of the quarrel his own sarcasms on the Prince's 
increasing corpulency, and his resemblance to Mrs. Fitzherbert's 
porter, " Big Ben." Certainly some praise is due to the Beau 
for the sangfroid with which he appeared to treat the matter, 
though in reality dreadfully cut up about it. He lounged 
about, made amusing remarks on his late friend and patron, 
swore he would "cut" him, and, in short, behaved with his us- 
ual aplomb. The " Wales, ring the bell," was sufficient proof 
of his impudence, but " Who's your fat friend ?" was really 
srood. 




THE HEST TUING BEAU BEUMMELI, EVEK SAID. 



"who's your fat friend?" 397 

It is well known, in all probability, that George IV. con- 
templated with as much disgust and horror the increasing ro- 
tundity of his " presence" as ever a maiden lady of a certain 
age did her first gray hair. Soon after the bell affair, the royal 
beau met his former friend in St. James's Street, and resolved 
to cut him. This was attacking Brummell with his own pet 
weapon, but not with success. Each antagonist was leaning 
on the arm of a friend. "Jack Lee," w T ho was thus support- 
ing the Beau, was intimate with the Prince, who, to make the 
cut the more marked, stopped and talked to him without tak- 
ing the slightest notice of Brummell. After a time both par- 
ties moved on, and then came the moment of triumph and 
revenge. It was sublime ! Turning round half way, so that 
his words could not fail to be heard by the retreating Regent, 
the Beau asked of his companion in his usual drawl, " Well, 
Jack, who's your fat friend ?" The coolness, presumption, and 
impertinence of the question perhaps made it the best thing 
the Beau ever said, and from that time the Prince took care 
not to risk another encounter with him.* 

Brummell was scotched rather than killed by the Prince's 
indifference. He at once resolved to patronize his brother, the 
Duke of York, and found in him a truer friend. The duchess, 
who had a particular fondness for dogs, of which she is said to 
have kept no fewer, at one time, than a hundred, added the 
puppy Brummell to the list, and treated him with a kindness 
in which little condescension was mixed. But neither impu- 
dence nor the blood-royal can keep a man out of debt, especial- 
ly when he plays. The Beau got deeper and deeper into the 
difficulty, and at last some mysterious quarrel about money 
with a gentleman Avho thenceforward went by the name of 
Dick the Dandy-killer, obliged him to think of place and pov- 
erty in another land. He looked in vain for aid, and among 
others Scrope Davies was- written to to lend him "two hund- 
red," "because his money was all in the three per cents." 
Scrope replied laconically — 

" My dear George, 
" It is very unfortunate, but my money is all in the three 
per cents. Yours, S. Davies." 

It was the last attempt. The Beau went to the opera, as 
usual, and drove away from it clear off to Dover, whence the 
packet took him to safety and slovenliness in the ancient town 

* Another version, given by Captain Jesse, represents this to have taken 
placn at a ball given at the Argyle Rooms in July, 1813, by Lord Alvanley, 
Sir Henry Mildmay, Mr. Pierrepoint, and Mr. Brummell. 



398 THE BLACK-MAIL OF CALAIS. 

of Calais. His few effects were sold after his departure. 
Porcelain, buhl, a drawing or two, double-barreled Mantons 
(probably never used), plenty of old wine, linen, furniture, and 
a few well-bound books, were the Beau's assets. His debts 
were with half the chief tradesmen of the West End and a 
large number of his personal friends. 

The climax is reached: henceforth Master George Bryan 
Brummell goes rapidly and gracefully down the hill of life. 

The position of a Calais beggar was by no means a bad one, 
if the reduced individual had any claim whatever to distinc- 
tion. A black-mail was sedulously levied by the outcasts and 
exiles of that town on every Englishman who passed through 
it; and in those days it was customary to pass some short 
time in this entrance of France. The English "residents" 
were always on the look-out, generally crowding round the 
packet-boat, and the new arrival was sure to be accosted by 
some old and attached friend, who had not seen him for yeai's. 
Just as Buttons, who is always breaking the plates and tum- 
blers, has the invariable mode of accounting for his careless- 
ness, "they fell apart, sir, in my 'ands!" so these expatriated 
Britons had always a tale of confidence misplaced — security 
for a bond — bail for a delinquent, or in short any hard case, 
which compelled them, much against their wills, to remain 
" for a period" on the shores of France. To such men, whom 
you had known in seven-guinea waistcoats at White's and 
Watier's, and found in seven-shilling coats on the Calais pier, 
it was impossible to refuse your five-pound note, and in time 
the black-mail of Calais came to be reckoned among the estab- 
lished expenses of a Continental tour. 

Brummell was a distinguished beggar of this description, 
and managed so adroitly that the new arrivals thought them- 
selves obliged by Mr. Brummell's acceptance of their dona- 
tions. The man who could not eat cabbages, drive in a hack- 
ney-coach, or wear less than three shirts a day, was now sup- 
ported by voluntary contributions, and did not see any thing 
derogatory to a gentleman in their acceptance. If Brummell 
had now turned his talents to account; if he had practiced his 
painting, in which he was not altogether despicable ; or his 
poetry, in which he had already had some trifling success : if 
he had even engaged himself as a waiter at Quillacq's, or given 
lessons in the art of deportment, his fine friends from town 
might have cut him, but posterity would have withheld its 
blame. He was a beggar of the merriest kind. While he 
wrote letters to friends in England, asking for remittances, 
and describing his wretched condition on a bed of straw and 
eating bran bread, he had a good barrel of Dorchester ale in 



GEORGE THE GREATER AND GEORGE THE LESS. 31)9 

his lodgings, his usual glass of maraschino, and his bottle of 
claret after dinner ; and though living on charity, could order 
new snuff-boxes to add to his collection, and new knick-knacks 
to adorn his room. There can be no pity for such a man, and 
we have no pity for him, whatever the rest of the world may 
feel. 

Nothing can be more contemptible than the gradual down- 
fall of the broken Beau. Yet, if it were doubted that his soul 
ever rose above the collar of a coat or the brim of a hat, his 
letters to Mr. Raikes in the time of his poverty would settle 
the question. " I heard of you the other day in a waistcoat 
that does you considerable credit, spick-and-span from Paris, 
a broad stripe, salmon color, and cramoise. Don't let them 
laugh you into a relapse — into the Gothic — as that of your for- 
mer English simplicity." He speaks of the army of occupa- 
tion as " rascals in red coats waiting for embarkation." " En- 
glish education," he says in another letter, "may be all very 
well to instruct the hemming of handkerchiefs, and the un- 
gainly romps of a country dance, but nothing else ; and it 
would be a poor consolation to your declining years to see 
your daughters come into the room upon their elbows, and to 
find their accomplishments limited to broad native phraseolo- 
gy in conversation, or thumping the ' Woodpecker' upon a dis- 
cordant spinet." And he proceeds to recommend " a good 
French formation of manners," and so forth. 

Nor did he display any of that dignity and self-respect which 
are generally supposed to mark the " gentleman." When his 
late friend and foe, by this time a king, passed through Calais, 
the Beau, broken in every sense, had not pride enough to keep 
out of his way. Many stories are told of the manner in which 
he pressed himself into George IV.'s notice, but the various 
legends mostly turn upon a certain snuff-box. According to 
one quite as reliable as any other, the Prince and the Beau 
had in their days of amity intended to exchange snuff-boxes, 
and George the Greater had given George the Less an order 
on his jeweler for a tabatiere with his portrait on the top. On 
their quarrel this order was, with very bad taste, rescinded, 
although Brummell's snuff-box had already passed into the 
Prince's hands and had not been returned. It is said that the 
Beau employed a friend to remind the king of this agreement, 
and ask for his box ; to whom the latter said that the story 
was all nonsense, and that he supposed " the poor devil," 
meaning his late intimate friend, wanted £100 and should 
have it. However, it is doubtful if the money ever reached 
the " poor devil." The story does not tell over well, for what- 
ever George IV.'s failings and faults, he seems to have had a 



4UU DOWN THE HILL OF LIFE. 

certain amount of good-nature, if not absolutely of good heart, 
at least sufficient sense of what became a prince, to prevent his 
doing so shabby an act, though he may have defrauded a hund- 
red tradesmen. In these days there were such things as " debts 
of* honor," and they were punctiliously attended to. There 
are, as we have said, various versions of this story, but all tend 
to show that Brummell courted the notice of his late master 
and patron on his way through the place of his exile ; and it is 
not remarkable in a man who borrowed so freely from all his 
acquaintances, and who was, in fact, in such a state of depend- 
ence on their liberality. 

Brummell made one grand mistake in his career as a Beau : 

i he outlived himself. For some twenty-four years he survived 
his flight from England, to which country he never returned. 
For a time he was an assiduous writer of begging-letters and 
the plague of his friends. At length he obtained the appoint- 
ment of consul at the good old Norman town of Caen. This 
was almost a sinecure, and the Beau took care to keep it so. 
But no one can account for the extraordinary step he took soon 
after entering on his consular duties. He wrote to Lord Palm- 
erston, stating that there were no duties attached to the post, 
and recommending its abolition. This act of suicide is partly 
explained by a supposed desire to be appointed to some more 
lively and more lucrative consulate ; but in this the Beau was 
mistaken. The consulate at Caen was vacated in accordance 

' with his suggestion, and Brummell was left penniless, in debt, 
and to shift for himself. With the aid of an English trades- 
man, half grocer, half banker, he managed to get through a 
period of his poverty, but could not long subsist in this way, 
and the punishment of his vanity and extravagance came at 
last in his old age. A term of existence in prison did not cure 
him, and when he was liberated he again resumed his primrose 
gloves, his Eau de Cologne, and his patent vernis for his boots, 
though at that time literally supported by his friends with an 
allowance of £120 per annum. In the old days of Caen life 
this would have been equal to £300 a year in England, and 
certainly quite enough for any bachelor ; but the Beau was 
really a fool. For whom, for what should he dress and polish 
his boots at such a quiet place as Caen ? Yet he continued to 
do so, and to run into debt for the polish. When he confessed 
to having, " so help him Heaven," not four francs in the world, 
he was ordering this vernis de Guiton, at five francs a bottle, 
from Paris, and calling the provider of it " a scoundrel," be- 
cause he ventured to ask for his money. What foppery, what 
folly was all this ! How truly worthy of the man who built 
his fame on the reputation of a coat ! Terrible indeed was the 



A MISERABLE OLD AGE. 401 

hardship that followed his extravagance ; he was actually com- 
pelled to exchange his white for a black cravat. Poor mar- 
tyr! after such a trial it is impossible to be hard upon him. 
So, too, the man who sent repeated begging-letters to the En- 
glish grocer, Arcnstrong, threw out of window a new dressing- 
gown because it was not of the pattern he wished to have. 

Retribution for all this folly came in time. His mind went 
even before his health. Though only some sixty years of age, 
almost the bloom of some men's life, he lost his memory and 
his powers of attention. His old ill-manners became positive- 
ly bad manners. When feasted and feted, he could find noth- 
ing better to say than " What a half-starved turkey !" At last 
the Beau was reduced to the level of that slovenliness which 
he had considered as the next step to perdition. Reduced to 
one pair of trowsers, he had to remain in bed till they were 
mended. He grew indifferent to his personal appearance, the 
surest sign of decay. Driveling, wretched, in debt, an object 
of contempt to all honest men, he dragged on a miserable ex- 
istence. Still with his boots in holes, and all the honor of beau- 
dom gone forever, he clung to the last to his Eau de Cologne, 
and some few other luxuries, and went down, a fool and a fop, 
to the grave. To indulge his silly tastes he had to part with 
one piece of property after another ; and at length he was left 
with little else than the locks of hair of which he had once 
boasted. 

I remember a story of a laborer and his dying wife. The 
poor woman was breathing her last wishes. "And, I say, 
William, you'll see the ould sow don't kill her young uns?" 
" Ay, ay, wife, set thee good." " And, I say, William, you'll 
see Lizzy goes to schule reg'lar?" "Ay, ay, wife, set thee 
good." " And, I say, William, you'll see Tommy's breeches 
is mended against he goes to schule again?" "Ay, ay, wife, 
set thee good." "And, I say, William, you'll see I'm laid 
proper in the yard?" William grew impatient. "Now never 
thee mind them things, wife, I'll see to 'em all, you just go 
on with your dying." No doubt Brummell's friends heartily 
wished that he would go on with his dying, for he had already 
lived too long; but he would live on. He is described in his 
last days as a miserable, slovenly, half-witted old creature, 
creeping about to the houses of a few friends he retained or 
who were kind enough to notice him still, jeered at by the 
gamins, and remarkable now, not for the cleanliness, but the 
filthiness and raggedness of his attire. 

Poor old fool ! one can not but pity him, when wretched, 
friendless, and miserable as he was, we find him, still graceful, 
in a poor cafe near the Place Royale, taking his cup of coffee, 



402 IN THE HOSPICE DU BON SAUVEUR. 

and when asked for the amount of his bill, answering very 
vaguely, " Oui, Madame, a la pleine lune, a la pleine lune." 

The drivelings of old age are no fit subject for ridicule, yet 
in the case of a man who had sneered so freely at his fellow- 
creatures, they may afford a useful lesson. One of his fancies 
was to give imaginary parties, when his tallow dips were all 
set alight and his servant announced with proper decorum, 
"The Duchess of Devonshire," "Lord Alvanley," "Mr. Sheri- 
dan," or whom not. The poor old idiot received the imagin- 
ary visitors with the old bow, and talked to them in the old 
strain, till his servant announced their imaginary carriages, 
and he was put driveling to bed. At last the idiocy became 
mania. He burnt his books, his relics, his tokens. He ate 
enormously, and the man who had looked upon beer as the ne 
plus ultra of vulgarity, was glad to imagine it champagne. 
Let us not follow the poor maniac through his wanderings. 
Rather let us throw a veil over all his driveling wretchedness, 
and find him at his last gasp, when coat and collar, hat and 
brim, were all forgotten, when the man who had worn three 
shirts a day was content to change his linen once a month. 
What a lesson, what a warning ! If Brummell had come to 
this pass in England, it is hard to say how and where he would 
have died. He was now utterly penniless, and had no pros- 
pect of receiving any remittances. It was determined to re- 
move him to the Hospice du Bon Sauveur, a Maison de Cha- 
rlie, where he would be well cared for at no expense. The 
mania of the poor creature took, as ever, the turn of external 
preparation. When the landlord of his inn entered to try and 
induce him to go, he found him with his wig on his knee, his 
shaving apparatus by his side, and the quondam beau deeply 
interested in lathering the peruke as a preliminary to shearing 
it. He resisted every proposal to move, and was carried down 
stairs kicking and shrieking. Once lodged in the Hospice, he 
was treated by the soeurs de charite with the greatest kind- 
ness and consideration. An attempt was made to recall him 
to a sense of his future peril, that he might at least die in a 
more religious mood than he had lived; but in vain. It is not 
for us, erring and sinful as we are, to judge any fellow-crea- 
ture ; but perhaps poor Brummell was the last man to whom 
religion had a meaning. His heart was good ; his sins were 
more those of vanity than those of hate ; it may be that they 
are regarded mercifully where the fund of mercy is unbound- 
ed. God grant that they may be so ; or who of us would es- 
cape ? None but devils will triumph over the death of any 
man in sin. Men are not devils ; they must and will always 
feel for their fellow-men, let them die as they will. No doubt 



O YOUNG MEN OP THIS AGE, BE WARNED ! 403 

Brummell was a fool — a fool of the first water — but that he 
was equally a knave is not so certain. Let it never be certain 
to blind man, who can not read the heart, that any man is a 
knave. He died on the 30th of March, 1840, only twenty 
years ago, and so the last of the Beaux passed away. People 
have claimed, indeed, for D'Orsay, the honor of Brummell's 
descending mantle, but D'Orsay was not strictly a beau, for 
he had other and higher tastes than mere dress. It has never 
been advanced that Brummell's heart was bad, in spite of his 
many faults. Vanity did all. Vanitas vanitatum. O young 
men of this age, be warned by a Beau, and flee his doubtful 
reputation! Peace then to the coat-thinker. Peace to all — 
to the worst. Let us look within and not judge. It is enough 
that we are not tried in the same balance. 



THEODORE EDWARD HOOK. 

If it be difficult to say what wit is, it is well-nigh as hard to 
pronounce what is not wit. In a sad world, mirth hath its full 
honor, let it come in rags or in purple raiment. The age that 
patronizes a " Punch" every Saturday, and a pantomime every 
Christmas, has no right to complain if it finds itself barren of 
wits, while a rival age has brought forth her dozens. Mirth 
is, no doubt, very good. We would see more, not less, of it in 
this unmirthful land. We would fain imagine the shrunken- 
cheeked factory-girl singing to herself a happy burden, as she 
shifts the loom — the burden of her life — and fain believe that 
the voice was innocent as the skylark's. But if it be not so — 
and we know it is not so — shall we quarrel with any one who 
tries to give the poor care-worn, money-singing public a little 
laughter for a few pence ? No, truly ; but it does not follow 
that a man who raises a titter is, of necessity, a wit. The next 
age, perchance, will write a book of " Wits and Beaux," in 
which Mr. Douglas Jerrold, Mr. Mark Lemon, and so on, will 
represent the wit of this passing day ; and that future age will 
not ask so nicely what wit is, and not look for that last solved 
of riddles, its definition. 

Hook has been, by common consent, placed at the head of 
modern wits. When kings were kings, they bullied, beat, and 
browbeat their jesters. Now and then they treated them to 
a few years in the Tower for a little extra impudence. Now 
that the people are sovereign, the jester fares better — nay, too 
well. His books or his bon-mots are read with zest and grins; 
he is invited to his Grace's and implored to my Lord's ; he is 
waited for, watched, pampered like a small Grand Llama, and, 
in one sentence, the greater the fool, the more fools he makes. 

If Theodore Hook had lived in the stirring days of King 
Henry VIIL, of blessed (?) memory, he would have sent 
Messrs. Patch and Co. sharply to the right-about, and been 
presented with the caps and bells after his first comic song. 
No doubt he was a jester, a fool in many senses, though he 
did not, like Solomon's fool, " say in his heart'''' very much. 
He jested away even the practicals of life, jested himself into 
disgrace, into prison, into contempt, into the basest employ- 
ment — that of a libeler tacked on to a party. He was a mim- 
ic, too, to whom none could send a challenge ; an improvisa- 



406 WHAT COLERIDGE SAID OF HOOK. 

tore, who beat Italians, Tyroleans, and Styrians hollow, sir, 
hollow. And lastly — oh ! shame of the shuffle-tongued — he 
was, too, a punster. Yes, a glorier in puns, a maker of pun 
upon pun, a man whose whole wit ran into a pun as readily as 
water rushes into a hollow, who could not keep out of a pun, 
let him loathe it or not, and who made some of the best and 
some of the worst on record, but still puns. 

If he was a wit withal, it was malgre sot, for fun, not wit, 
was his "aspiration." Yet the world calls him a wit, and he 
has a claim to his niche. There were, it is true, many a man 
in his own set who had more real wit. There were James 
Smith, Thomas Ingoldsby, Tom Hill, and others. Out of his 
set, but of his time, there was Sydney Smith, ten times more a 
wit ; but Theodore could amuse, Theodore could astonish, 
Theodore could be at home any where ; he had all the impu- 
dence, all the readiness, all the indhTerence of^a jester, and a 
jester he was. 

Let any one look at his portrait, and he will doubt if this be 
the king's jester, painted by Holbein, or Mr. Theodore Hook, 
painted by Eddis. The short, thick nose, the long upper lip, 
the sensual, whimsical mouth, the twinkling eyes, all belong 
to the regular maker of fun. Hook was a certificated jester, 
with a lenient society to hear and applaud him, instead of an 
irritable tyrant to keep him in order : and he filled his post 
well. Whether he was more than a jester may well be doubt- 
ed ; yet Coleridge, when he heard him, said, " I have before 
in my time met with men of admirable promptitude of intel- 
lectual power and play of wit, which, as Stillmgfleet says, 

" 'The rays of wit gild wheresoe'er they strike,' 

but I never could have conceived such readiness of mind and 
resources of genius to be poured out on the mere subject and 
impulse of the moment." The poet was wrong in one respect. 
Genius can in no sense be applied to Hook, though readiness 
was his chief charm. 

The famous Theodore was born in the same year as Byron, 
1788, the one on the 22d of January, the other on the 22d 
of September ; so the poet was only nine months his senior. 
Hook, like many other wits, was a second son. Ladies of sixty 
or seventy well remember the name of Hook as that which ac- 
companied their earliest miseries. It was in learning Hook's 
exercises, or primers, or whatever they were called, that they 
first had their fingers slapped over the pianoforte. The father 
of Theodore, no doubt, was the unwitting cause of much un- 
happiness to many a young lady in her teens. Hook pere was 
an organist at Norwich. He came up to town, and was en- 



hook's family. 407 

gaged at Marylebone Gardens and at Vauxhall ; so that Theo- 
dore had no excuse for being of decidedly plebeian origin, 
and, Tory as he was, he was not fool enough to aspire to pa- 
tricianism. 

Theodore's family was, in real fact, Theodore himself. He 
made the name what it is, and raised himself to the position 
he at one time held. Yet he had a brother whose claims to 
celebrity are not altogether ancillary. James Hook was fifteen 
years older than Theodore. After leaving Westminster School, 
he was sent to immortal Skimmery (St. Mary's Hall), Oxford, 
which has fostered so many great men — and spoiled them. He 
was advanced in the Church from one preferment to another, 
and ultimately became Dean of Worcester. The character of 
the reverend gentleman is pretty well known, but it is unnec- 
essary here to go into it farther. He is only mentioned as 
Theodore's brother in this sketch.* He was a dabbler in lit- 
erature, like his brother, but scarcely to the same extent a dab- 
bler in wit. 

The younger son of " Hook's Exercises" developed early 
enough a taste for ingenious lying — so much admired in his 
predecessor, Sheridan. He " fancied himself" a genius, and 
therefore, from school-age, not amenable to the common laws 
of ordinary men. Frequenters of the now fashionable prize- 
ring — thanks to two brutes who have brought that degraded 
pastime into prominent notice — will hear a great deal about a 
man " fancying himself." It is common slang, and needs little 
explanation. Hook " fancied himself" from an early period, 
and continued to "fancy himself," in spite of repeated dis- 
graces, till a very mature age. At Harrow, he was the con- 
temporary, but scarcely the friend, of Lord Byron. No two 
characters could have been more unlike. Every one knows, 
more or less, what Byron's was ; it need only be said that 
Hook's was the reverse of it in every respect. Byron felt 
where Hook laughed. Byron was morbid where Hook was 
gay. Byron abjured with disgust the social vices to which he 
was introduced ; Hook fell in with them. Byron indulged in 
vice in a romantic way ; Hook in the coarsest. There is some 
excuse for Byron, much as he has been blamed. There is lit- 
tle or no excuse for Hook, much as his faults have been palli- 
ated. The fact is that goodness of heart will soften, in men's 
minds, any or all misdemeanors. Hook, in spite of many vul- 
gar witticisms and cruel jokes, seems to have had a really good 
heart. 

I have it on the authority of one of Hook's most intimate 

* Dr. James Hook, Dean of Worcester, was father to Dr. Walter Farquhar 
Hook, now the excellent Dean of Chichester, late Vicar of Leeds. 



408 VERSATILITY. 

friends, that he was capable of any act of kindness, and by- 
way of instance of his goodness of heart, I am told by the same 
person that he on one occasion quitted all his town amuse- 
ments to solace the spirit of a friend in the country who was 
in serious trouble. I, of course, refrain from giving names ; 
but the same person informs me that much of his time was 
devoted, in a like manner, to relieving, as far as possible, the 
anxiety of his friends, often, indeed, arising from his own care- 
lessness. It is due to Hook to make this impartial statement 
before entering on a sketch of his " Sayings and Doings," 
which must necessarily leave the impression that he was a 
heartless man. 

Old Hook, the father, soon pei*ceived the value of his son's 
talents ; and, determined to turn them to account, encouraged 
his natural inclination to song-writing. At the age of sixteen 
Theodore wrote a kind of comic opera, to which his father 
supplied the music. This was called "The Soldier's Return." 
It was folio wed by others, and young Hook, not yet out of his 
teens, managed to keep a Drury Lane audience alive, as well 
as himself and family. It must be remembered, however, that 
Liston and Mathews could make almost any piece amusing. 
The young author was introduced behind the scenes through 
his father's connection with the theatre, and often played the 
fool under the stage while others were playing it for him above 
it, practical jokes being a passion with him which he developed 
thus early. These tricks were not always very good-natured, 
which may be said of many of his jokes out of the theatre. 

He soon showed evidence of another talent, that of acting 
as well as writing pieces. Assurance was one of the main 
features of his character, and to it he owed his success in soci- 
ety ; but it is a remarkable fact, that on his first appearance 
before an audience he entirely lost all his nerve, turned pale, 
and could scarcely utter a syllable. He rapidly recovered, 
however, and from this time became a favorite performer in 
private theatricals, in which he was supported by Mathews 
and Mrs. Mathews, and some amateurs who were almost equal 
to any professional actors. His attempts were, of course, 
chiefly in broad farce and roaring burlesque, in which his comic 
face, Avith its look of mock gravity, and the twinkle of the eyes, 
itself excited roars of laughter. Whether he would have suc- 
ceeded as well in sober comedy or upon public boards may 
well be doubted. Probably he would not have given to the 
profession that careful attention and entire devotion which 
are necessary to bring forward properly the highest natural 
talents. It is said that for a long time he was anxious to take 
to the stage as a profession, but, perhaps — as the event seems 



VARIETIES OF HOAXING. 409 

to show — unfortunately for him, lie was dissuaded from what 
his friends must have thought a very rash step, and in after 
years he took a violent dislike to the profession. Certainly 
the stage could not have offered more temptations than did the 
society in which he afterward mixed ; and perhaps, under any 
circumstances, Hook, whose moral education had been neglect- 
ed, and whose principles were never very good, would have 
lived a life more or less vicious, though he might not have died 
as he did. 

Hook, however, was not long in coming very prominently 
before the public in another capacity. Of all stories told about 
him, none are more common or more popular than those which 
relate to his practical jokes and hoaxes. Thank Heaven, the 
world no longer sees amusement in the misery of others, and 
the fashion of such clever performance is gone out. It is fair, 
however, to premise, that while the cleverest of Hook's hoax- 
es were of a victimizing character, a large number were just 
the reverse, and his admirers affirm, not without some reason, 
that when he had got a dinner out of a person he did not know, 
by an ingenious lie, admirably supported, he fully paid for it in 
the amusement he afforded his host and the ringing metal of 
his wit. As we have all been boys — except those that were 
girls — and not all of us very good boys, we can appreciate that 
passion for robbery which began with orchards and passed on 
to knockers. It is difficult to sober middle-age to imagine what 
entertainment there can be in that breach of the eighth com- 
mandment, which is generally regarded as innocent. As Sher- 
idan swindled in fun, so Hook, as a young man, robbed in fun, 
as hundreds of medical students and others have done before 
and since. Hook, however, was a proficient in the art, and 
would have made a successful " cracksman" had he been born 
in the Seven Dials. He collected a complete museum of knock- 
ers, bell-pulls, wooden Highlanders, barbers' poles, and shop 
signs of all sorts. On one occasion he devoted a whole fort- 
night to the abstraction of a golden eagle over a shop window, 
by means of a lasso. A fellow-dilettante in the art had confi- 
dentially informed him of its whereabouts, adding that he him- 
self despaired of ever obtaining it. At length Hook invited 
his friend to dinner, and on the removal of the cover of what 
was supposed to be the joint, the work of art appeared served 
up and appropriately garnished. Theodore was radiant with 
triumph ; but the friend, probably thinking that there ought 
to be honor among thieves, was highly indignant at being thus 
surpassed. 

Another achievement of this kind was the robbery of a life- 
sized Highlander, who graced the door of some unsuspecting 

S 



410 THE BLACK-WAFERED HOESE. 

tobacconist. There was little difficulty in the mere displace- 
ment of the figure ; the troublesome part of the business was 
to get the bare-legged Celt home to the museum, where prob- 
ably many a Liliputian of his race was already awaiting him. 
A cloak, a hat, and Hook's ready wit effected the transfer. The 
first was thrown over him, the second set upon his bonneted 
head, and a passing hackney-coach hailed by his captor, who, 
before the unsuspecting driver could descend, had opened the 
door, pushed in the prize, and whispered to Jehu, " My friend 
— very respectable man — but rather tipsy." How he managed 
to get him out again at the end of the journey we are not told. 

Hook was soon a successful and valuable writer of light pieces 
for the stage. But farces do not live, and few of Hook's are 
now favorites with a public which is always athirst for some- 
thing new. The incidents of most of the pieces — many of them 
borrowed from the French — excited laughter by their very im- 
probability ; but the wit which enlivened them was not of a 
high order, and Hook, though so much more recent than Sher- 
idan, has disappeared before him. 

But his hoaxes were far more famous than his collection of 
curiosities, and quite as much to the purpose ; and the impu- 
dence he displayed in them was only equaled by the quaint- 
ness of the humor which suggested them. Who else would 
have ever thought, for instance, of covering a white horse with 
black wafers, and driving it in a gig along a Welsh high-road, 
merely for the satisfaction of being stared at ? It was almost 
worthy of Barnum. Or who, with less assurance, could have 
played so admirably on the credulity of a lady and daughters 
fresh from the country, as he did at the trial of Lord Melville ? 
The lady, who stood next to him, was naturally anxious to un- 
derstand the proceedings, and betrayed her ignorance at once 
by a remark which she made to her daughter about the pro- 
cession of the Lords into the House. When the bishops en- 
tered in full episcopal costume, she applied to Hook to know 
who were " those gentlemen ?" " Gentlemen," quoth Hook, 
with charming simplicity ; " ladies, I think you mean ; at any 
rate, those are the dowager peeresses in their own right." 
Question followed question as the procession came on, and 
Theodore indulged his fancy more and more. At length the 
Speaker, in full robes, became the subject of inquiry. "And 
pray, sir, who is that fine-looking person ?" " That, ma'am, is 
Cardinal Wolsey," was the calm and audacious reply. This 
was too much even for Sussex ; and the lady drew herself up 
in majestic indignation. " We know better than that, sir," 
she replied ; " Cardinal Wolsey has been dead many a good 
year." Theodore was unmoved. " No such thing, my dear 



THE BEBNEKS STREET HOAX. 411 

madam," he answered, without the slightest sign of perturba- 
tion : " I know it has been generally reported so in the coun- 
try, but without the slightest foundation ; the newspapers, you 
know, will say any thing." 

But the hoax of hoaxes, the one which filled the papers of 
the time for several days, and which, eventually, made its au- 
thor the very prince of hoaxsters, if such a term can be admit- 
ted, was that of Berners Street. Never, perhaps, was so much 
trouble expended, or so much attention devoted, to so frivolous 
an object. In Berners Street there lived an elderly lady, who, 
for no reason that can be ascertained, had excited the animos- 
ity of the young Theodore, who was then just of age. Six 
Aveeks were spent in preparation, and three persons were en- 
gaged in the affair. Letters were sent off in every direction, 
and Theodore Hook's autograph, if it could have any value, 
must have been somewhat low in the market at that period, 
from the number of applications which he wrote. On the day 
in question he and his accomplices seated themselves at a win- 
dow in Berners Street, opposite to that of the unfortunate Mrs. 
Tottenham, of No. 54, and there enjoyed the fun. Advertise- 
ments, announcements, letters, circulars, and what not, had been 
most freely issued, and were as freely responded to. A score 
of sweeps, all "invited to attend professionally," opened the ball 
at a very early hour, and claimed admittance, in virtue of the 
notice they had received. The maid-servant had only just time 
to assure them that all the chimneys were clean, and their serv- 
ices were not required, when some dozen of coal-carts drew up 
as near as possible to the ill-fated house. New protestations, 
new indignation. The grimy and irate coal-heavers were still 
being discoursed with, when a bevy of neat and polite individ- 
uals arrived from different quarters, bearing each under his arm 
a splendid ten-guinea wedding-cake. The maid grew distract- 
ed ; her mistress was single, and had no intention of doubling 
herself; there must be some mistake ; the confectioners were 
dismissed, in a very different humor to that with which they 
had come. But they were scarcely gone when crowds began 
to storm the house, all " on business." Rival doctors met in 
astonishment and disgust, prepared for an accouchement ; un- 
dertakers stared one another mutely in the face, as they depos- 
ited at the door coffins made to order — elm or oak — so many 
feet and so many inches ; the clergymen of all the neighboring- 
parishes, high church or low church, were ready to minister to 
the spiritual wants of the unfortunate moribund, but retired in 
disgust when they found that some forty fishmongers had been 
engaged to purvey " cod's head and lobsters" for a person pro- 
fessing to be on the brink of the grave. 



412 SUCCESS OF THE SCHEME. 

The street now became the scene of fearful distraction. Fu- 
rious tradesmen of every kind were ringing the house-bell, and 
rapping the knocker for admittance — such, at least, as could 
press through the crowd as far as the house. Bootmakers ar- 
rived with Hessians and Wellingtons — " as per order" — or the 
most delicate of dancing-shoes for the sober old lady ; haber- 
dashers had brought the last new thing in evening dress, "quite 
the fashion," and " very chaste ;" hatmakers, from Lincoln and 
Bennett down to the Hebrew vendor in Marylebone Lane, ar- 
rived with their crown-pieces ; butchers' boys, on stout little 
nags, could not get near enough to deliver the legs of mutton 
which had been ordered ; the lumbering coal-carts still " stop- 
ped the way." A crowd — the easiest curiosity in the world to 
collect — soon gathered round the motley mob of butchers, bak- 
ers, candlestick-makers, and makers and sellers of every thing 
else that mortal can want ; the mob thronged the pavement, 
the carts filled the road, and soon the carriages of the noble of 
the land dashed up in all the panoply of state, and a demand 
was made to clear the way for the Duke of Gloucester, for the 
Governor of the Bank, the Chairman of the East India Com- 
pany, and last, but oh ! not least, the grandee whose successor 
the originator of the plot afterward so admirably satirized — 
the great Lord Mayor himself. The consternation, disgust, and 
terror of the elderly female, the delight and chuckling of The- 
odore and his accomplices, seated at a window on the opposite 
side of the road, " can be more easily imagined than described ;" 
but what were the feelings of tradesmen, professional men, gen- 
tlemen, noblemen, and grand officials, who had been summon- 
ed from distant spots by artful lures to No. 54, and there bat- 
tled with a crowd in vain only to find that they were hoaxed, 
people who had thus lost both time and money, can be neither 
described nor imagined. It was not the idea of the hoax — 
simple enough in itself — which was entitled to the admiration 
accorded to ingenuity, but its extent and success, and the clev- 
er means taken by the conspirators to insure the attendance of 
every one who ought not to have been there. It was only late 
at night that the police succeeded in clearing the street, and the 
dupes retired, mimnm*ing and vowing vengeance. Hook, how- 
ever, gloried in the exploit, which he thought " perfect." 

But the hoaxing dearest to Theodore — for there was some- 
thing to be gained by it — was that by which he managed to 
obtain a dinner when either too hard up to pay for one, or in 
the humor for a little amusement. No one who has not lived 
as a bachelor in London and been reduced — in respect of coin 
— to the sum of twopence halfpenny, can tell how excellent a 
strop is hunger to sharpen wit upon. We all know that 



KITCHEN EXAMINATIONS. 413 

" Mortals with stomachs can't live without dinner ;" 
and in Hook's day the substitute of " heavy teas" was not in- 
vented. Necessity is very soon brought to bed, when a man 
puts his fingers into his pockets, finds them untenanted, and 
remembers that the only friend who would consent to lend 
him five shillings is gone out of town ; and the infant, Inven- 
tion, presently smiles into the nurse's face. But it was no 
uncommon thing in those days for gentlemen to invite them- 
selves where they listed, and stay as long as they liked. It 
was only necessary for them to make themselves really agree- 
able, and deceive their host in some way or other. Hook's 
friend, like little Tom Hill, of whom it was said that he knew 
every body's affairs far better than they did themselves, was 
famous for examining kitchens about the hour of dinner, and 
quietly selecting his host according to the odor of the viands. 
It is of him that the old " Joe Miller" is told of the " haunch 
of venison." Invited to dinner at one house, he happens to 
glance down into the kitchen of the next, and seeing a tempt- 
ing haunch of venison on the spit, throws over the inviter, and 
ingratiates himself with his neighbor, who ends by asking him 
to stay to dinner. The fare, however, consisted of nothing 
more luxurious than an Irish stew, and the disappointed guest 
was informed that he had been " too cunning by half," inas- 
much as the venison belonged to his original inviter, and had 
been cooked in the house he was in by kind permission, be- 
cause the chimney of the owner's kitchen smoked. 

The same principle often actuated Theodore ; and, indeed, 
there are few stories which can be told of this characteristic 
of the great frolicker, which have not been told a century of 
times. For instance : two young men are strolling, toward 5 
P. M., in the then fashionable neighborhood of Soho ; the one 
is Terry, the actor — the other, Hook, the actor, for surely he 
deserves the title. They pass a house, and sniff the viands 
cooking underground. Hook quietly announces his intention 
of dining there. He enters, is admitted and announced by the 
servant, mingles with the company, and is quite at home be- 
fore he is perceived by the host. At last the denouement 
came; the dinner-giver approached the stranger, and with 
great politeness asked his name. " Smith" was, of course, the 
reply, and reverting to mistakes made by servants in announc- 
ing, etc., Smith hurried off into an amusing story, to put his 
host in good-humor. The conversation that followed is taken 
from " Ingoldsby :" 

" But, really, my dear sir," the host put in, " I think the 
mistake on the present occasion does not originate in the 
source you allude to ; I certainly did not anticipate the honor 
of Mr. Smith's company to-day." 



414 THE WRONG HOUSE. 

" No, I dare say not. Yon said four in your note, I know 
and it is now, I see, a quarter past five ; but the fact is, I have 
been detained in the City, as I was going to explain — " 

" Pray," said the host, " whom do you suppose you are ad- 
dressing ?" 

"Whom? why Mr. Thompson, of course, old friend of my 
father. I have not the pleasure, indeed, of being personally 
known to you, but having received your kind invitation yes- 
terday," etc., etc. 

" No, sir, my name is not Thompson, but Jones," in highly 
indignant accents. 

" Jones !" was the well-acted answer : " why, surely, I can 
not have — yes I must — good heaven ! I see it all. My dear 
sir, what an unfortunate blunder ; wrong house — what must 
you think of such an intrusion? I am really at a loss for 
words in which to apologize ; you will permit me to retire at 
present, and to-morrow — " 

" Pray, don't think of retiring," rejoined the host, taken 
with the appearance and manner of the young man. " Your 
friend's table must have been cleared long ago, if, as you say, 
four was the hour named, and I am too happy to be able to 
offer you a seat at mine." 

It may be easily conceived that the invitation had not to be 
very often repeated, and Hook kept the risible muscles of the 
company upon the constant stretch, and paid for the entertain- 
ment in the only coin with which he was well supplied. 

There was more wit, however, in his visit to a retired watch- 
maker, who had got from government a premium of £10,000 
for the best chronometer. Hook was very partial to journeys 
in search of adventure ; a gig, a lively companion, and sixpence 
for the first turnpike being generally all that was requisite; 
ingenuity supplied the rest. It was on one of these excursions 
that Hook and his friend found themselves in the neighborhood 
of Uxbridge, with a horse and a gig, and not a sixpence to be 
found in any pocket. Now a horse and gig are property, but 
of what use is a valuable of which you can not dispose or de- 
posit at a pawnbroker's, while you are prevented proceeding 
on your way by that neat white gate with the neat white box 
of a house at its side ? The only alternative left to the young 
men was to drive home again, dinnerless, a distance of twenty 
miles, with a jaded horse, or to find gratuitous accommodation 
for man and beast. In such a case Sheridan would simply 
have driven to the first inn, and by persuasion or stratagem 
contrived to elude payment, after having drunk the best wine 
and eaten the best dinner the house could afford. Hook was 
really more refined, as well as bolder in his pillaging. 



THE HACKNEY-COACH DEVICE. 415 

The villa of the retired tradesman was perceived, and the 
gig soon drew up before the door. The strangers were ush- 
ered in to the watchmaker, and Hook, with great politeness 
and a serious respectful look, addressed him. He said that he 
felt he was taking a great liberty — so he was — but that he 
could not pass the door of a man who had done the country 
so much service by the invention of what must prove the most 
useful and valuable instrument, without expressing to him the 
gratitude which he, as a British subject devoted to his coun- 
try's good, could not but feel toward the inventor, etc., etc. 
The flattery was so delicately and so seriously insinuated, that 
the worthy citizen could only receive it as an honest expres- 
sion of sincere admiration. The Rubicon was passed ; a little 
lively conversation, artfully made attractive by Hook, follow- 
ed, and the watchmaker was more and more gratified. He 
felt, too, what an honor it would be to entertain two real gen- 
tlemen, and remarking that they were far from town, brought 
out at last the longed-for invitation, which was, of course, de- 
clined as out of the question. Thereupon the old gentleman 
became pressing: the young strangers were at last preA r ailed 
upon to accept it, and very full justice they did to the larder 
and cellar of the successful chronometer-maker. 

There is nothing very original in the act of hoaxing, and 
Hook's way of getting a hackney-coach without paying for it 
was, perhaps, .suggested by Sheridan's, but was more laugha- 
ble. Finding himself in the vehicle, and knowing that there 
was nothing either in his purse or at home to pay the fare, he 
cast about for expedients, and at last remembered the address 
of an eminent surgeon in the neighborhood. He ordered the 
coachman to drive to his house and knock violently at the 
door, which was no sooner opened than Hook rushed in, terri- 
bly agitated, demanded to see the doctor, to whom, in a few 
incoherent and agitated sentences, he gave to understand that 
his wife needed his services immediately, being on the point 
of becoming a mother. 

" I will start directly," replied the surgeon ; " I will order 
my carriage at once." 

" But, my dear sir, there is not a moment to spare. I have 
a coach at the door, jump into that." 

The surgeon obeyed. The name and address given Avere 
those of a middle-aged s]:>inster of the most rigid virtue. We 
can imagine her indignation, and how sharply she rung the 
bell, when the surgeon had delicately explained the object of 
his visit, and how eagerly he took refuge in the coach. Hook 
had, of course, walked quietly away in the mean time, and the 
Galenite had to pay the demand of Jehu. 



416 hook's talents as an improvisatore. 

The hoaxing stories of Theodore Hook are numberless. 
Hoaxing was the fashion of the day, and a childish fashion 
too. Charles Mathews, whose face possessed the flexibility 
of an acrobat's body, and who could assume any character or 
disguise on the shortest notice, was his great confederate in 
these plots. The banks of the Thames were their great resort. 
At one point there was Mathews talking gibberish in a dis- 
guise intended to represent the Spanish embassador, and act- 
ually deceiving the Woolwich authorities by his clever imper- 
sonation. At another, there was Hook landing uninvited with 
his friends upon the well-known, sleek-looking lawn of a testy 
little gentleman, drawing out a note-book and talking so au- 
thoritatively about the survey for a canal, to be undertaken by 
government, that the owner of the lawn becomes frightened, 
and in his anxiety attempts to conciliate the mighty self-macle 
official by the oiler of dinner — of course accepted. 

Then the Arcades ambo show off their jesting tricks at 
Croydon fair, a most suitable place for them. On one occasion 
Hook personates a madman, accusing Mathews, " his brother," 
of keeping him out of his rights and in his custody. The 
whole fair collects around them, and begins to sympathize with 
Hook, who begs them to aid in his escape from his " brother." 
A sham escape and sham capture take place, and the party ad- 
journ to the inn, where Mathews, who had been taken by sur- 
prise by the new pai't suddenly played by his confederate, 
seized uf>on a hearse, which drew up before the inn, on its re- 
turn from a funeral, persuaded the company to bind the " mad- 
man," who was now becoming furious, and would have deposit- 
ed him in the gloomy vehicle if he had not succeeded in snap- 
ping his fetters, and so escaped. In short, they were two boys, 
with the sole difference that they had sufficient talent and ex- 
perience of the world to maintain admirably the parts they 
assumed. 

But a far more famous and more admirable talent in Theo- 
dore than that of deception was that of improvising. The art 
of improvising belongs to Italy and the Tyrol. The wondei'- 
ful gift of ready verse to express satire and ridicule, seems, 
as a rule, to be confined to the inhabitants of these two lands. 
Others are, indeed, scattered over the world, w r ho possess this 
gift, but very sparsely. Theodore Hook stands almost alone 
in this country as an improviser. Yet, to judge of such of his 
verses as have been preserved, taken down from memory or 
what not, the grand effect of them — and no doubt it was grand 
— must have been owing more to his maimer and his acting 
than to any intrinsic value in the verses themselves, which 
are, for the most part, slight, and devoid of actual wit, though 




TlIEOHO;.E Il'MIKS KNUINKEUINU 1'IluUl 



THE GIFT BECOMES HIS BAXE. 419 

abounding in puns. Shei'idan's testimony to the wonderful 
powers of the man is, perhaps, more valuable than that of any- 
one else, for Sherry was a good judge both of verse and of wit. 
One of Hook's earliest displays of his talent was at a dinner 
given by the Drury Lane actors to Sheridan at the Piazza Cof- 
fee House in 1808. Here, as usual, Hook sat down to the pi- 
ano, and, touching off a few chords, gave verse after verse on 
all the events of the entertainment, on each person present, 
though he now saw many of them for the first time, and on 
any thing connected with the matters of interest before them. 
Sheridan was delighted, and declared that he could not have 
believed such a faculty possible if he had not witnessed its ef- 
fects ; that no description " could have convinced him of so 
peculiar an instance of genius," and so forth. 

One of his most extraordinary efforts in this line is related 
by Mr. Jordan. A dinner was given by Mansell Reynolds 
to Lockhart, Luttrell, Coleridge, Hook, Tom Hill, and others. 
The grown-up schoolboys, pretty far gone in Falernian, of a 
home-made and very homely vintage, amused themselves by 
breaking the wine-glasses, till Coleridge was set to demolish 
the last of them with a fork thrown at it from the side of the 
table. Let it not be supposed that any teetotal spirit sug- 
gested this icouoclasm, far from it — the glasses were too small, 
and the poets, the wits, the punsters, the jesters, preferred to 
drink their port out of tumblers. After dinner Hook gave 
one of his songs, which satirized successively, and successfully, 
each person present. He was then challenged to improvise 
on any given subject, and by way of one as far distant from 
poetry as could be, cocoanut oil was fixed upon. Theodore 
accepted the challenge ; and after a moment's consideration 
began his lay with a description of the Mauritius, which he 
knew so well, the negroes dancing round the cocoanut-tree, 
the process of extracting the oil, and so forth, all in excellent- 
rhyme and rhythm, if not actual poetry. Then came the voy- 
age to England, hits at the Italian warehousemen, and so on, 
till the oil is brought into the very lamp before them in that 
very room, to show them with the light it feeds, and make them 
able to break wine-glasses and get drunk from tumblers. This 
Ave may be sure Hook himself did, for one, and the rest were 
probably not much behind him. 

In late life this gift of Hook's — improvising I mean, not get- 
ting intoxicated — was his highest recommendation in society, 
and at the same time his bane. Like Sheridan, he was ruined 
by his wonderful natural powers. It can well be imagined that 
to improvise in the manner in which Hook did it, and at a mo- 
ment's notice, required some effort of the intellect. This effort 



420 hook's novels. 

became greater as circumstances depi-essed his spirits more and 
more, and yet, with evei'y care upon his mind, he was expected, 
wherever he went, to amuse the guests with a display of his tal- 
ent. He could not do so without stimulants, and, rather than 
give up society, fell into habits of drinking, which hastened his 
death. 

We have thrown together the foregoing anecdotes of Hook, 
irresj^ective of time, in order to show what the man's gifts 
were, and what his title to be considered a wit. We must 
proceed more steadily to a review of his life. Successful as 
Hook had proved as a writer for the stage, he suddenly and 
without any sufficient cause rushed off into another branch of 
literature, that of novel- writing. His first attempt in this 
kind of fiction was " The Man of Sorrow," published under the 
nom tie plume of Alfred Allendale. This was not, as its name 
would seem to imply, a novel of pathetic cast, but the history 
of a gentleman whose life from beginning to end is rendered 
wretched by a succession of mishaps of the most ludicrous but 
improbable kind. Indeed, Theodore's novels, like his stage- 
pieces, are gone out of date in an age so practical that even 
in romance it will not allow of the slightest departure from 
reality. Their very style was ephemeral, and their interest 
could not outlast the generation to amuse which they were 
penned. This first novel was written when Hook was one- 
and-twenty. Soon after he was sent to Oxford, where he had 
been entered at St. Mary's Hall, more affectionately known 
by the nickname of " Skimmery." No selection could have 
been worse. Skimmery was, at that day, and until quite re- 
cently, a den of thieves, where young men of fortune and folly 
submitted to be pillaged in return for being allowed perfect 
license, as much to eat as they could possibly swallow, and 
far more to drink than w r as at all good for them. It has re- 
quired all the enterprise of the present excellent Principal to 
convert it into a place of sober study. It was then the most 
" gentlemanly" residence in Oxford ; for a gentleman in those 
days meant a man who did nothing, spent his own or his fa- 
ther's guineas with a brilliant indifference to consequences, 
and Avho applied his mind solely to the art of frolic. It was 
the very place where Hook would be encouraged instead of 
restrained in his natural propensities, and had he remained 
there, he would probably have ruined himself and his father 
long before he had put on the sleeves. 

At the matriculation itself he gave a specimen of his "fun." 
When asked, according to the usual form, " if he was willing 
to sign the Thirty-nine Articles," he replied, " Certainly, sir ; 
forty if you please." The gravity of the stern Vice-Chancel- 



COLLEGE FUN. 421 

lor was upset, but as no Oxford Don can ever pardon a joke, 
however good, Master Theodore was very nearly being dis- 
missed, had not his brother, by this time a Prebendary of 
Winchester, and "an honor to his college, sir," interceded in 
his favor. 

The night before, he had given a still better specimen of his 
impudence. He had picked up a number of old Harrowvians, 
with whom he had repaired to a tavern for song, supper, and 
sociability, and as usual in such cases, in the lap of Alma Ma- 
ter, the babes became sufficiently intoxicated, and not a little 
uproarious. Drinking in a taveni is forbidden by Oxonian 
statutes, and one of the proctors happening to pass in the 
street outside, was attracted into the hoxtse by the sound of 
somewhat unscholastic merriment. The effect can be imag- 
ined. All the youths were in absolute terror, except Theo- 
dore, and looked in vain for some way to escape. The wary 
and faithful "bull-dogs" guarded the doorway; the marshal, 
predecessor of the modern omniscient Brown, advanced re- 
spectfully behind the proctor into the room, and passing a 
penetrating glance from one youth to the other, all of whom 
— except Theodore again — he knew by sight — for that is the 
pride and pleasure of a marshal — mentally registered their 
names in secret hopes of getting half a crown apiece to forget 
them again. 

No mortal is more respectful in his manner of accosting you 
than an Oxford proctor, for he may make a mistake, and a 
mistake may make him very miserable. When, for instance, 
a highly respectable lady was the other day lodged, in spite of 
protestations, in the " Procuratorial Rooms," and there locked 
up on suspicion of being somebody very different, the over- 
zealous proctor who had ordered her incarceration was sued 
for damages for £300, and had to pay them too ! Therefore 
the gentleman in question most graciously and suavely in- 
quired of Mr. Theodore Hook — 

" I beg your pardon, sir, but are you a member of this uni- 
versity ?" — the usual form. 

" No, sir, I am not. Are you ?" 

The suavity at once changed to grave dignity. The proc- 
tor lifted up the hem of his garment, which being of broad 
velvet, with the selvage on it, was one of the insignia of his 
office, and sternly said, " You see this, sir." 

" Ah !" said Hook, cool as ever, and quietly feeling the ma- 
terial, which he examined with apparent interest, " I see ; Man- 
chester velvet : and may I take the liberty, sir, of inquiring how 
much you have paid per yard for the article?" 

A roar of laughter from all present burst out with such ve- 



422 THE "PUNNING FACULTY. 

hemence that it shot the poor official, red with suppressed an- 
ger, into the street again, and the merrymakers continued their 
bout till the approach of midnight, when they were obliged to 
return to their respective colleges. 

Had Theodore proceeded in this way for several terms, no 
doubt the outraged authorities would have added his name to 
the list of the great men whom they have expelled from time 
to time most unproj)hetically. As it was, he soon left the 
groves of Academus, and sought those of Fashion in town. 
His matriculation into this new university was much more au- 
spicious ; he was hailed in society as already fit to take a degree 
of bachelor of his particular arts, and ere long his improvising, 
his fun, his mirth — as yet natural and overboiling — his wicked 
punning, and his tender wickedness, induced the same institu- 
tion to offer him the grade of " Master" of those arts. In after 
years he rose to be even " Doctor," and many, perhaps, were 
the minds diseased to which his well-known mirth ministered. 

It was during this period that some of his talents were 
displayed in the manner we have described, though his great 
fame as an improvisatore was established more completely in 
later days. Yet he had already made himself a name in that 
species of wit — not a very high one — which found favor with 
the society of that period. We allude to imitation, " taking 
off," and punning. The last contemptible branch of wit-mak- 
ing, now happily confined to " Punch," is as old as variety of 
language. It is not possible with sinrple vocabularies, and 
accordingly is seldom met with in purely-derived languages. 
Yet we have Roman and Greek puns ; and English is peculiar- 
ly adapted to this childish exercise, because, being made up of 
several languages, it necessarily contains many words which 
are like in sound and unlike in meaning. Punning is, in fact, 
the vice of English wit, the temptation of English mirth-mak- 
ers, and, at last, we trust, the scorn of English good sense. 
But in Theodore's day it held a high place, and men who had 
no real wit about them could twist and turn words and com- 
binations of words with great ingenuity and much readiness, 
to the delight of their listeners. Pun-making was a fashion 
among the conversationists of that day, and took the place of 
better wit. Hook was a disgraceful punster, and a successful 
one. He strung puns together by the score — nothing more 
easy — in his improvised songs and conversation. Take an in- 
stance from his quiz on the march of intellect : 

"Hackney-coachmen from Swift shall reply, if you feel 
Annoyed at being needlessly shaken ; 
And butchers, of course, be flippant from Steele, 
And pig-drivers well versed in Bacon. 



OFFICIAL LIFE OPENS. 423 

From Locke, shall the hlacksmiths authority brave, 

And gas-men cite Coke at discretion ; 
Undertakers talk Gay as they go to the grave, 

And watermen Rowe by profession." 

I have known a party of naturally stupid people produce a 
whole century of puns one after another, on any subject that 
presented itself, and I am inclined to think that nothing can, 
at the same time, be more nauseous, or more destructive to 
real wit. Yet Theodore's strength lay in puns, and when 
shorn of them, the Philistines might well laugh at his want 
of strength. Surely his title to wit does not lie in that di- 
rection. 

However, he amused, and that gratis ; and an amusing man 
makes his way any where if he have only sufficient tact not to 
abuse his privileges. Hook grew great in London society for 
a time, and might have grown greater if a change had not come. 

He had supported himself, up to 1812, almost entirely by 
his pen ; and the goose-quill is rarely a staff, though it may 
sometimes be a walking-stick. It was clear that he needed — 
what so many of us need and can not get — a certainty. Happy 
fellow ; he might have begged for an appointment for years in 
vain, as many another does, but it fell into his lap, no one 
knows how, and at four-and-twenty Mr. Theodore Edward 
Hook was made treasurer to the Island of Mauritius, with a 
salary of £2000 per annum. This was not to be, and was not, 
sneezed at. In spite of climate, musquitoes, and so forth, Hook 
took the money and sailed. 

We have no intention of entering minutely upon his conduct 
in this office, which has nothing to do with his character as a 
wit. There are a thousand and one reasons for believing him 
guilty of the charges brought against him, and a thousand and 
one for supposing him guiltless. Here was a young man, gay, 
jovial, given to society entirely, and not at all to arithmetic, 
put into a very trying and awkward position — native clerks 
who would cheat if they could, English governors who would 
find fault if they could, a disturbed treasury, an awkward cur- 
rency, liars for witnesses, and undeniable evidence of defalca- 
tion. In a word, an examination was made into the state of 
the treasury of the island, and a large deficit found. It re- 
mained to trace it home to its original author. 

Hook had not acquired the best character in the island. 
Those who know the official dignity of a small British colony 
can well understand how his pleasantries must have shocked, 
those worthy big-wigs who, exalted from Pump Court, Tem- 
ple, or Paradise Row, Old Brompton, to places of honor and 
high salaries, rode their high horses with twice the exclusive- 



424 CHARGE OF EMBEZZLEMENT. 

ness of those " to the manor born." For instance, Hook was 
once, by a mere chance, obliged to take the chair at an official 
dinner, on which occasion the toasts proposed by the chairman 
were to be accompanied by a salute from guns without. Hook 
went through the list, and seemed to enjoy toast-drinking so 
much that he was quite sorry to have come to the end of it, 
and continued, as if still from the list, to propose successively 
the health of each officer present. The gunners were growing 
quite weary, but, having their orders, dared not complain. 
Hook was delighted, and went on to the amazement and 
amusement of all who were not tired of the noise, each youth- 
ful sub, taken by surprise, being quite gratified at the honor 
done him. At last there was no one left to toast; but the 
wine had taken effect, and Hook, amid roars of laughter in- 
side, and roars of savage artillery without, proposed the health 
of the waiter who had so ably officiated. This done, he be- 
thought him of the cook, who was sent for to return thanks ; 
but the artillery officer had by this time got wind of the affair, 
and feeling that more than enough powder had been wasted 
on the health of gentlemen who were determined to destroy it 
by the number of their potations, took on himself the respons- 
ibility of ordering the gunners to stop. 

On another occasion he incurred the displeasure of the gov- 
ernor, General Hall, by fighting a duel — fortunately as harm- 
less as that of Moore and Jeffrey — 

" When Little's leadless pistol met his eye, 
And Bow-street myrmidons stood laughing by," 

as Byron says. The governor was sensible enough to wish to 
put down the " Gothic appeal to arms," and was therefore the 
more irate. 

These circumstances must be taken into consideration in 
Hook's favor in examining the charge of embezzlement. It 
must also be stated that the information of the deficit was 
sent in a letter to the governor by a man named Allan, chief 
clerk in the Treasury, who had, for irregular conduct, been 
already threatened with dismissal. Allan had admitted that 
he had known of the deficit for fifteen months, and yet he had 
not, till he was himself in trouble, thought of making it known 
to the proper authorities. Before his examination, which of 
course followed, could be concluded, Allan committed suicide. 
Now, does it not, on the face of it, seem of the highest proba- 
bility that this man was the real delinquent, and that, know- 
ing that Hook had all the responsibility, and having taken fair 
precautions against his own detection, he had anticipated a 
discovery of the affair by a revelation, incriminating the treas- 
urer ? Qirien .sabe ; — dead men tell no tales. 



MISFORTUNE. 425 

The chest, however, was examined, and the deficit found 
far greater yet than had been reported. Hook could not ex- 
plain, could not understand it at all ; but if not criminal, he 
had necessarily been careless. He was arrested, thrown into 
prison, and by the first vessel dispatched to England to take 
his trial, his property of every kind having been sold for the 
Government. Hook, in utter destitution, might be supposed 
to have lost his usual spirits, but he could not resist a joke. 
At St. Helena he met an old friend going out to the Cape, 
who, surprised at seeing him on his return voyage after a res- 
idence of only five years, said, "I hope you are not going 
home for your health." " Why," said Theodore, " I am sor- 
ry to say they think there is something wrong in the chesty 
" Something wrong in the chest" became henceforward the or- 
dinary phrase in London society in referring to Hook's scrape. 

Arrived in England, he was set free, the Government here 
having decided that he could not be criminally tried ; and thus 
Hook, guilty or not, had been ruined and disgraced for life for 
simple carelessness. True, the custody of a nation's property 
makes negligence almost criminal ; but that does not excuse 
the punishment of a man before he is tried. 

He was summoned, however, to the Colonial Audit Board, 
where he underwent a trying examination ; after which he was 
declared to be in the debt of Government : a writ of extent 
was issued against him ; nine months were passed in that de- 
lightful place of residence — a sponging-house, which he then 
exchanged for the " Rules of the Bench" — the only rules which 
have no exception. From these he was at last liberated, in 
1825, on the understanding that he was to repay the money 
to Government if at any time he should be in a position to 
do so. 

His liberation was a tacit acknowledgment of his innocence 
of the charge of robbery; his encumberment with a debt 
caused by another's delinquencies was, we presume, a signifi- 
cation of his responsibility and some kind of punishment for 
his carelessness. Certainly it was hard upon Hook, that, if 
innocent, he should not have gone forth without a stain on 
his character for honesty; and it was unjust that, if guilty, he 
should not have been punished. The judgment was one of 
those compromises with stern justice which are seldom satis- 
factory to either party. 

The fact was that, guilty or not guilty, Hook had been both 
incompetent and inconsiderate. Doubtless he congratulated 
himself highly on receiving, at the age of twenty-five, an ap- 
pointment worth £2000 a year in the paradise of the world ; 
but how short-sighted his satisfaction, since this very appoint- 



426 DOUBLY DISGRACED. 

ment left him some ten years later a pauper to begin life anew 
with an indelible stain on his character. It was absurd to give 
so young a man such a post ; but it was absolutely wrong in 
Hook not to do his utmost to carry out his duties properly. 
Nay, he had trifled with the public money in the same liberal 
— perhaps a more liberal — spirit as if it had been his own — 
made advances and loans here and there injudiciously, and 
taken little heed of the consequences. Probably, at this day, 
the common opinion acquits Hook of a designed and compli- 
cated fraud ; but common opinion never did acquit him of mis- 
conduct, and even by his friends this affair was looked upon 
with a suspicion that preferred silence to examination. 

But why take such pains to exonerate Hook from a charge 
of robbery, when he was avowedly guilty of as bad a sin, of 
which the law took no cognizance, and which society forgave 
far more easily than it could have done for robbing the state ? 
Soon after his return from the Mauritius, he took lodgings in 
the cheap but unfashionable neighborhood of Somers Town. 
Here, in the moment of his misfortune, when doubting wheth- 
er disgrace, imprisonment, or what not awaited him, he sought 
solace in the affection of a young woman, of a class certainly 
much beneath his, and of a character unfit to make her a valu- 
able companion to him. Hook had received little moral train- 
ing, and had he done so, his impulses were sufficiently strong 
to overcome any amount of principle. With this person — to 
use the modern slang which seems to convert a glaring sin 
into a social misdemeanor — " he formed a connection." In 
other words, he destroyed her virtue. Hateful as such an act 
is, we must, before we can condemn a man for it without any 
recommendation to mercy, consider a score of circumstances 
which have rendered the temptation stronger and the result 
almost involuntary. Hook was not a man of high moral char- 
acter — very far from it — but we need not therefore suppose 
that he sat down coolly and deliberately, like a villain in a 
novel, to effect the girl's ruin. But the Rubicon once passed, 
how difficult is the retreat! There are but two paths open to 
a man who would avoid living a life of sin : the one, to marry 
his victim ; the other, to break off the connection before it is 
too late. The first is, of course, the more proper course ; but 
there are cases where marriage is impossible. From the lat- 
ter a man of any heart must shrink with horror. Yet there 
are cases, even, where the one sin will prove the least — where 
she who has loved too well may grieve bitterly at parting, yet 
will be no more open to temptation than if she had never fall- 
en. Such cases are rare, and it is not probable that the young 
person with whom Hook had become connected would have 



ATTACKS ON THE QUEEN. 425 

retrieved the fatal error. She became a mother, and there 
was no retreat. It is clear that Hook ought to have married 
her. It is evident that he was selfish and wrong not to do so ; 
yet he shrank from it weakly, wickedly, and he was punished 
for his shrinking. He had sufficient feeling not to throw his 
victim over, yet he was content to live a life of sin and to 
keep her in such a life. This is, perhaps, the blackest stain 
on Hook's character. When Fox married, in consequence of 
a similar connection, he " settled down," retrieved his early 
errors, and became a better man, morally, than he had ever 
been. Hook ought to have married. It was the cowardly 
dread of public opinion that deterred him from doing so, and, 
in consequence, he was never happy, and felt that this connec- 
tion was a perpetual burden to him. 

Wrecked and ruined, Hook had no resource but his literary 
talents, and it is to be deplored that he should have prostitu- 
ted these to serve an ungentlemanly and dishonorable party in 
their onslaught upon an unfortunate woman. Whatever may 
be now thought of the queen of "the greatest gentleman" — or 
roue — of Europe, those who hunted her down will never be 
pardoned, and Hook was one of those. We have cried out 
against an Austrian general for condemning a Hungarian lady 
to the lash, and we have seen, with delight, a mob chase him 
through the streets of London and threaten his veiy life. But 
we have not only pardoned, but even praised, our favorite wit 
for far worse conduct than this. Even if we allow, which we 
do not, that the queen was one half as bad as her enemies, or 
rather her husband's toadies, would make her out, we can not 
forgive the men who, shielded by their incognito, and perfect- 
ly free from danger of any kind, set upon a woman with libels, 
invectives, ballads, epigrams, aud lampoons, which a lady could 
scarcely read, and of which a royal lady, and many an English 
gentlewoman, too, were the butts. 

The vilest of all the vile papers of that day was the " John 
Bull," now settled down to a quiet periodical. Perhaps the 
real John Bull, heavy, good-natured lumberer as he is, was 
never worse represented than in this journal which bore his 
name, but had little of his kindly spirit. Hook was its origin- 
ator, and for a long time its main supporter. Scurrility, scan- 
dal, libel, baseness of all kinds formed the fuel with which it 
blazed, and the wit, bitter, unflinching, unsparing, which puff- 
ed the flame up, was its chief recommendation. 

No more disgraceful climax was ever reached by a disgrace- 
ful dynasty of profligates than that which found a King of 
England — long, as Regent, the leader of the profligate and de- 
graded — at war with his injured queen. None have deserved 



42S AN INCONGRUOUS MIXTURE. 

better the honest gratitude of their country than those who, 
like Henry Brougham, defended the oppressed woman in spite 
of opposition, obloquy, and ridicule. 

But we need not go deeply into a history so fresh in the 
minds of all, as that blot which shows John Bull himself up- 
holding a wretched dissipated monarch against a wife, who, 
whatever her faults, was still a woman, and whatever her 
spirit — for she had much of it, and showed it grandly at need 
— was still a lady. Suffice it to say that "John Bull" was 
the most violent of the periodicals that attacked her, and that 
Theodore Hook, no Puritan himself, was the principal writer 
in that paper. 

If you can imagine "Punch" turned Conservative, incorpo- 
rated in one paper with the " Morning Herald," so that a col- 
umn of news was printed side by side with one of a jocular 
character, and these two together devoted without principle 
to the support of a party, the attack of Whiggism, and an un- 
blushing detractation of the chai'acter of one of our princess- 
es, you can form some idea of what " John Bull" was in those 
days. There is, however, a difference : " Punch" attacks pub- 
lic characters, and ridicules public events ; " John Bull" drag- 
ged out the most retired from their privacy, and attacked 
them with calumnies, for which, often, there was no founda- 
tion. Then, again, "Punch" is not nearly so bitter as was 
" John Bull :" there is not in the " London Charivari" a de- 
termination to say every thing that spite can invent against 
any particular set or party ; there is a good-nature, still, in 
Master "Punch." It was quite the reverse in "John Bull," 
established for one purpose, and devoted to that. Yet the 
wit in Theodore's paper does not rise much higher than that 
of our modern laughing philosopher. 

Of Hook's contributions the most remarkable was the "Rams- 
bottom Letters," in which Mrs. Lavinia Dorothea Ramsbottom 
describes all the memory billions of her various tours at home 
and abroad, always, of course, with more or less allusion to 
political affairs. The " fun" of these letters is very inferior to 
that of " Jeames" or of the " Snob Papers," and consists more 
in Malaprop absurdities and a wide range of bad puns, than in 
any real wit displayed in them. Of the style of both, we take 
an extract any where : 

" Oh ! Mr. Bull, Room is raley a beautiful place. We en- 
tered it by the Point of Molly, which is just like the Point and 
Sally at Porchmouth, only they call Sally there Port, which is 
not known in Room. The Tiber is a nice river ; it looks yel- 
low, but it does the same there as the Tames does here. We 
hired a carry-lettz and a cocky-oily to take us to the Church 



HOOK S SONG ON CLUBS. 429 

of Salt Peter, which is prodigious big ; in the centre of the pi- 
zarro there is a basilisk very high, on the right and left two 
handsome foundlings ; and the farcy, as Mr. Fulrner called it, 
is ornamented with collateral statutes of some of the Apos- 
tates." 

We can quite imagine that Hook wrote many of these let- 
ters in his cups. Some are laughable enough, but the major- 
ity are so deplorably stupid, reeking with puns and scurrility, 
that when the temporary interest was gone, there was nothing 
left to attract a reader. It is scarcely possible to laugh at the 
Joe-Millerish mistakes, the old-world puns, and the trite sto- 
ries of Hook " remains." Remains ! indeed ; they had better 
have remained where they were. 

Besides prose of this kind, Hook contributed various jin- 
gles — there is no other name for them — arranged to popular 
tunes, and intended to become favorites with the country peo- 
ple. These, like the prose effusions, served the purpose of an 
hour, and have no interest now. Whether they were ever 
really popular remains to be proved. Certes, they are forgot- 
ten now, and long since even in the most conservative corners 
of the country. Many of these have the appearance of having 
been originally recitati, and their amusement must have de- 
pended chiefly on the face and manner of the singer — Hook 
himself; but in some he displayed that vice of rhyming which 
has often made nonsense go down, and which is tolerable only 
when introduced in the satire of a "Don Juan" or the first- 
rate mimicry of " Rejected Addresses." Hook had a most 
Avonderful facility in concocting out-of-the-way rhymes, and 
a few verses from his song on Clubs will suffice for a good 
specimen of his talent : 

"If any man loves comfort, and has little cash to buy it, he 
Should get into a crowded club — a most select society ; 
While solitude and mutton-cutlets serve infelix uxor, he 

May have his club (like Hercules), and revel there in luxury. 

Bow, wow, wow, etc. 

"Yes, clubs knock houses on the head ; e'en Hatchett's can't demolish them ; 
Joy grieves to see their magnitude, and Long longs to abolish them. 
The inns are out ; hotels for single men scarce keep alive on it ; 
While none but houses that are in the family way thrive on it. 

Bow, wow, wow, etc. 

"There's first the Athenamm Club, so wise, there's not a man of it 
That has not sense enough for six (in fact, that is the plan of it); 
The very waiters answer you with eloquence Socratical ; 

And always place the knives and forks in order mathematical. 

Bow, wow, wow, etc. 
***** 
"E'en Isis has a house in town, and Cam abandons her city. 
The master now hangs out at the Trinity University. 



430 FORTUNE AND POPULARITY. 

***** 
"The Union Club is quite superb ; its best apartment daily is 
The lounge of lawyers, doctors, merchants, beaux, cum vmltis aliis. 
***** 

"The Travelers are in Pall Mall, and smoke cigars so cosily, 
And dream they climb the highest Alps, or rove the plains of Moselai. 
# * * * * 

"These are the stages which all men propose to play their parts upon, 
For clubs are what the Londoners have clearly set their hearts upon. 
Bow, wow, wow, tiddy-iddy-iddy-iddy, bow, wow, wow," etc. 

This is one of the harmless ballads of "Bull." Some of the 
political ones are scarcely fit to print in the present day. We 
can not wonder that ladies of a certain position gave out that 
they would not receive any one who took in this paper. It 
was scurrilous to the last degree, and Theodore Hook was the 
soul of it. He preserved his incognito so well that, in spite 
of all attempts to unearth him, it was many years before he 
could be certainly fixed upon as a writer in its columns. He 
even went to the length of writing letters and articles against 
himself, in order to disarm suspicion. 

Hook now lived and thrived purely on literature. He pub- 
lished many novels — gone where the bad novels go, and un- 
read in the present day, unless in some remote country town, 
which boasts only a very meagre circulating library. Improb- 
ability took the place of natural painting in them ; punning 
supplied that of better wit ; and personal portraiture was so 
freely used, that his most intimate friends — old Mathews, for 
instance — did not escape. 

Meanwhile Hook, now making a good fortune, returned to 
his convivial life, and the enjoyment — if enjoyment it be — of 
general society. He " threw out his bow-window" on the 
strength of his success with " John Bull," and spent much 
more than he had. He mingled freely in all the London cir- 
cles of thirty years ago, whose glory is still fresh in the minds 
of most of us, and every where his talent as an improvisatore, 
and his conversational powers, made him a general favorite. 

Unhappy popularity for Hook ! He, who was yet deeply in 
debt to the nation — who had an illegitimate family to maintain, 
who owed in many quarters more than he could ever hope to 
pay — was still fool enough to entertain largely, and receive 
both nobles and wits in the handsomest manner. "Why did he 
not live quietly ? why not, like Fox, marry the unhappy wom- 
an whom he had made the mother of his children, and content 
himself Avith trimming vines and rearing tulips ? Why, for- 
sooth ? because he was Theodore Hook, thoughtless and fool- 
ish to the last. The jester of the people must needs be a fool. 
Let him take it to his conscience that he was not as much a 
knave. 



THE END. 431 

In his latter years Hook took to the two dissipations most 
likely to bring him into misery — play and drink. He was ut- 
terly unfitted for the former, being too gay a spirit to sit down 
and calculate chances. He lost considerably, and the more he 
lost the more he played. Drinking became almost a necessity 
with him. He had a reputation to keep up in society, and had 
not the moral courage to retire from it altogether. Writing, 
improvising, conviviality, play, demanded stimulants. His 
mind was overworked in every sense. He had recourse to 
the only remedy, and in drink he found a temporary relief 
from anxiety, and a short-lived sustenance. There is no doubt 
that this man, who had amused London circles for many years, 
hastened his end by drinking. 

It is not yet twenty years since Theodore Hook died. He 
left the world on August the 24th, 1841, and by this time he 
remains in the memory of men only as a wit that was, a pun- 
ster, a hoaxei*, a story-jester, with an ample fund of fun, but 
not as a great man in any way. Allowing every thing for his 
education — the times he lived in, and the unhappy error of his 
early life — we may admit that Hook was not, in character, the 
worst of the wits. He died in no odor of sanctity, but he was 
not a blasphemer or reviler, like others of his class. He ig- 
nored the bond of matrimony, yet he remained faithful to the 
woman he had betrayed ; he was undoubtedly careless in the 
one responsible office with which he was intrusted, yet he can 
not be taxed, taking all in all, with deliberate peculation. His 
drinking and playing were bad — very bad. His improper con- 
nection was bad — very bad ; but perhaps the worst feature in 
his career was his connection with " John Bull," and his ready 
giving in to a system of low libel. There is no excuse for this 
but the necessity of living ; but Hook, had he retained any 
principle, might have made enough to live upon in a more 
honest manner. His name does, certainly, not stand out well 
among the wits of this country, but, after all, since all were so 
bad, Hook may be excused as not being the worst of them. 
Mequiescat in pace. 



SYDNEY SMITH. 

" Smith's reputation" — to quote from Lord Cockburn's 
"Memorials of Edinburgh" — "here, then, was the same as it 
has been throughout his life, that of a wise wit." A wit he 
Avas, but we must deny him the reputation of being a beau. 
For that, nature, no less than his holy office, had disqualified 
him. Who that ever beheld him in a London drawing-room, 
when he went to so many dinners that he used to say he was 
a walking patty — who could ever miscall him a beau ? How 
few years have Ave numbered since one perceived the large 
bulky form in canonical attire — the plain, heavy, almost ugly 
face, large, long, unredeemed by any expression, except that of 
sound hard sense — and thought, " can this be the Wit ?" How 
few years is it since Henry Cockburn, hating London, and com- 
ing but rarely to what he called the " devil's drawing-room," 
stood near him, yet apart, for he was the most diffident of 
men ; his wonderful luminous eyes, his clear, almost youthful, 
vivid complexion, contrasting brightly with the gray, pallid, 
prebendal complexion of Sydney ? how short a time since 
Francis Jeffrey, the smallest of great men, a beau in his old 
age, a wit to the last, stood hat in hand to bandy words with 
Sydney ere he rushed off to some still gayer scene, some more 
fashionable circle : yet they are all gone — gone from sight, liv- 
ing in memory alone. 

Perhaps it was time : they might have lived, indeed, a few 
short years longer ; we might have heard their names among 
us ; listened to their voices ; gazed tipon the deep hazel, ever- 
sparkling eyes, that constituted the charm of Cockburn's hand- 
some face, and made all other faces seem tame and dead : we 
might have marveled at the ingenuity, the happy turns of ex- 
pression, the polite sarcasm of Jeffrey ; we might have reveled 
in Sydney Smith's immense natural gift of fun, and listened to 
the " wise wit," regretting, with Lord Cockburn, that so much 
worldly wisdom seemed almost inappropriate in one who should 
have been in some freer sphere than within the pale of holy 
orders : Ave might have clone this, but the picture might have 
been otherAvise. Cockburn, Avhose intellect rose, and became 
almost sublime, as his spirit neared death, might have sunk 
into the depression of conscious weakness ; Jeffrey might have 
repeated himself, or turned hypochondriacal ; Svdnev Smith 

T 



434 ODDITIES OF THE FATHER. 

have grown garrulous : let us not grieve ; they went in their 
prime of intellect, before one quality of mind had been touched 
by the frost-bite of age. 

Sydney Smith's life is a chronicle of literaiy society. He 
was born in 1771, and he died in 1845. What a succession of 
great men does that period comprise ! Scott, Jeffrey, Mackin- 
tosh, Dugald Stewart, Horner, Brougham, and Cockburn were 
his familiars — a constellation which has set, we fear, forever. 
Our world presents nothing like it : we must look back, not 
around us, for strong minds, cultivated up to the nicest point. 
Our age is too diffused, too practical for us to hope to witness 
again so grand a spectacle. 

From his progenitors Sydney Smith inherited one of his 
best gifts, great animal spirits — the only spirits one wants in 
this racking life of ours ; and his were transmitted to him by 
his father. That father, Mr. Robert Smith, was odd as well as 
clever. His oddities seem to have been coupled with folly ; 
but that of Sydney was soberized by thought, and swayed by 
intense common sense. The father had a mania for buying 
and altering places : one need hardly say that he spoiled them. 
Having done so, he generally sold them ; and nineteen various 
places were thus the source of expense to him and of injury to 
the pecuniary interests of his family. 

This strange spendthrift married a Miss Olier, the daughter 
of a French emigrant from Languedoc. Every one may re- 
member the charming attributes given by Miss Kavanagh, in 
her delicious tale, " Nathalie," to the French women of the 
South. This Miss Olier seems to have realized all one's ideas 
of the handsome, sweet-tempered, high-minded Southrons of 
la belle France. To her Sydney Smith traced his native gay- 
ety ; her beauty did not, certainly, pass to him as well as to 
some of her other descendants. When Talleyrand was living 
in England as an emigrant, on intimate terms with Robert 
Smith, Sydney's brother, or Bobus, as he was called by his in- 
timates, the conversation turned one day on hereditary beauty. 
Bobus spoke of his mother's personal perfections : "Ah I mon 
ami" cried Talleyrand, " c'etait apjKiremment, monsieur: voire 
pere qui n'etait 2x1s Men." 

This Bobus was the schoolfellow at Eaton of Canning and 
Frere ; and, with John Smith and those two youths, wrote the 
" Microcosm." Sydney, on the other hand, was placed, on the 
Foundation, at Winchester, which was then a stern place of 
instruction for a gay, spirited, hungry boy. Courtenay, his 
younger brother, went with him, but ran away twice. To owe 
one's education to charity Avas, in those days, to be half starved. 
Never was there enough, even of the coarsest food, to satisfy 



VERSE-MAKING AT WINCHESTER. 435 

the boys, and the urchins, fresh from home, were left to fare as 
they might. " Neglect, abuse, and vice were," Sydney used to 
say, " the pervading evils of Winchester ; and the system of 
teaching, if one may so call it, savored of the old monastic nar- 
rowness. ... I believe, when a boy at school, I made above ten 
thousand Latin verses, and no man in his senses would dream 
of ever making another in after-life. So much for life and time 
wasted." The verse-inciting process is, nevertheless, remorse- 
lessly carried on during three years more at Oxford, and is 
much oftener the test of patient stupidity than of aspiring tal- 
ent. Yet of what stupendous importance it is in the attain- 
ment of scholarships and prizes ; and how zealous, how tena- 
cious are dons and "coaches" in holding to that which far 
higher classics, the Germans, regard with contempt ! 

Sydney's proficiency promoted him to be captain of the 
school, and he left Winchester for New College, Oxford — one 
of the noblest and most abused institutions then of that grand 
university. Having obtained a scholarship, as a matter of 
course, and afterward a fellowship, he remarked that the usual 
bumpers of port wine at college were as much the order of the 
day among the Fellows as Latin verses among the under-grad- 
uates. We may not, however, picture to ourselves Sydney as 
partaking in the festivities of the common room; with more 
probability let us imagine him wandering with steady gait, 
even after Hall — a thing not either then or now certain in col- 
leges — in those evergreen, leafy, varied gardens, flanked by 
that old St. Peter's church on the one side, and guarded by 
the high wall, once a fortification, on the other. He was poor, 
and therefore safe, for poveiiy is a guardian angel to an under- 
graduate, and work may protect even the Fellow from utter 
deterioration. 

He was turned out into the world by his father with his 
hundred a year from the Fellowship, and never had a farthing 
from the old destroyer of country-seats afterward. He never 
owed a sixpence ; nay, he paid a debt of thirty pounds, which 
Courtenay, who had no iron in his character, had incurred at 
Winchester, and had not the courage to avow. The next step 
was to choose a profession. The bar would have been Syd- 
ney's choice ; but the Church was the choice of his father. It 
is the cheapest channel by which a man may pass into genteel 
poverty; "wit and independence do not make bishops," as 
Lord Cockburn remarks. We do not, however, regard, as he 
does, Sydney Smith as " lost" by being a churchman. He was 
happy, and made others happy ; he was good, and made others 
good. Who can say the same of a successful barrister, or of 
a popular orator? His first sphere was in a curacy on Salis- 



436 OLD EDINBURGH. 

bury Plain ; one of his earliest clerical duties was to marry his 
brother Robert (a barrister) to Miss Vernon, aunt to Lord 
Lansdown. " All I can tell you of the marriage," Sydney wrote 
to his mother, " is that he cried, she cried, I cried." It was 
celebrated in the library at Bowood, where Sydney so often 
enchanted the captivating circle afterward by his wit. 

Nothing could be more gloomy than the young pastor's life 
on Salisbury Plain: "the first and poorest pauper of the ham- 
let," as he calls a curate, he was seated down among a few 
scattered cottages on this vast flat ; visited even by the butch- 
B er's cart only once a week from Salisbury ; accosted by few 
human beings ; shunned by all who loved social life. But the 
probation was not long ; and after being nearly destroyed by 
a thunder-storm in one of his rambles, he quitted Salisbury 
Plain, after two years, for a more genial scene. 

There was a hospitable squire, a Mr. Beach, living in Smith's 
parish ; the village of Netherhaven, near Amesbury. Mr. Beach 
had a son ; the quiet Sundays at the Hall were enlivened by 
the curate's company at dinner, and Mr. Beach found his guest 
both amusing and sensible, and begged him to become tutor 
to the young squire. Smith accepted ; and wen.t away with 
his pupil, intending to visit Germany. The French Revolu- 
tion was, however, at its height. Germany was impracticable, 
and " we were driven," Sydney wrote to his mother, " by stress 
of politics, into Edinburgh." 

This accident — this seeming accident — was the foundation 
of Sydney Smith's opportunities ; not of his success, for that 
his own merits procured, but of the direction to which his 
efforts were applied. He would have been eminent wherever 
destiny had led him ; but he was thus made to be useful in 
one especial manner : " his lines had, indeed, fallen in pleasant 
places." 

Edinburgh, in 1797, was not, it is almost needless to say, the 
Edinburgh of 1860. An ancient, picturesque, high-built look- 
ing city, with its wynds and closes, it had far more the char- 
acteristics of an old French ville de Province than of a north- 
ern capital. The foundation-stone of the new College was laid 
in 1789, but the building was not finished until more than for- 
ty years afterward. The edifice then stood in the midst of 
fields and gardens. " Often," writes Lord Cockburn, " did we 
stand to admire the blue and yellow crocuses rising through 
the clean earth in the first days of spring, in the house of Doc- 
tor Monro (the second), whose house stood in a small field en- 
tering from Nicolson street, within less than a hundred yards 
from the college." 

The New Town was in progress when Sydney Smith and 



ITS SOCIAL AND ARCHITECTURAL FEATURES. 43 i 

his pupil took refuge in "Auld Reekie." With the rise of 
every street some fresh innovation in manners seemed also to 
begin. Lord Cockburn, wedded as he was to his beloved 
Reekie, yet unprejudiced and candid in all points, ascribes the 
change in customs to the intercourse with the English, and 
seems to date it from the Union. Thus the overflowing of the 
old town into fresh spaces "implied," as he remarks, "a gen- 
eral alteration of our habits." 

As the dwellers in the Faubourg St. Germain regard their 
neighbors across the Seine, in the Faubourg St. Honore, with 
disapproving eyes, so the sojourners in the Cauongate and the 
Cowgate considered that the inundation of modern popula- 
tion vulgarized their "prescriptive gentilities." Cockburn's 
description of a Scottish assembly in the olden time is most 
interesting. 

" For example, Saint Cecilia's Hall was the only public re- 
sort of the musical ; and, besides being our most selectly fash- 
ionable place of amusement, was the best and most beautiful 
concert-room I have ever seen. And there have I myself seen 
most of our literary and fashionable gentlemen, predominating 
with their side curls and frills, and ruffles, and silver buckles ; 
and our stately matrons stiffened in hoops, and gorgeous satin ; 
and our beauties with high-heeled shoes, powdered and poma- 
tumed hair, and lofty and composite head-dresses. All this 
was in the Cowgate ; the last retreat nowadays of destitution 
and disease. The building still stands, though raised and 
changed. When I last saw it, it seemed to be partly an old- 
clothesman's shop and partly a brazier's." Balls were held in 
the beautiful rooms of George Square, in spite of the " New 
Town piece of presumption," that is, an attempt to force the 
fashionable dancers of the reel into the George Street apart- 
ments. 

"And here," "writes Lord Cockburn, looking back to the 
days when he was that "ne'er-do-weel" Harry Cockburn, 
" were the last remains of the ball-room discipline of the pre- 
ceding age. Martinet dowagers and venerable beaux acted 
as masters and mistresses of ceremonies, and made all the pre- 
liminary arrangements. No couple could dance unless each 
party was provided with a ticket prescribing the precise place, 
in the precise dance. If there was no ticket, the gentleman or 
the lady was dealt with as an intruder, and turned out of the 
dance. If the ticket had marked upon it — say for a country- 
dance, the figures 3, 5, this meant that the holder was to place 
himself in the 3d dance, and oth from the top; and if he was 
any where else, he was set right or excluded. And the ])art- 
ner's ticket must correspond. Woe on the poor girl who, with 



438 MAKING LOVE METAPHYSICALLY. 

ticket 2, 7, was found opposite a youth marked 5, 9 ! It was 
flirting without a license, and looked very ill, and would prob- 
ably be reported by the ticket director of that dance to the 
mother." 

All this had passed away ; and thus the aristocracy of a few 
individuals was ended ; and society, freed from some of its re- 
straints, flourished in another and more enlightened way than 
formerly. 

There were still a sufficient number of peculiarities to grat- 
ify one who had an eye to the ludicrous. Sydney Smith soon 
discovered that it is a work of time to impart a humorous idea 
to a true Scot. "It requires," he used to say, "a surgical 
operation to get a joke, well into a Scotch understanding." 
" They are so imbued with metaphysics, that they even make 
love metaphysically. I overheard a young lady of my ac- 
quaintance, at a dance in Edinburgh, exclaim in a sudden pause 
of the music, ' What you say, my Lord, is very true of love in 
the abstract, but — ' here the fiddlers began fiddling furiously, 
and the rest was lost." He was, however, most deeply touched 
by the noble attribute of that nation which 'retains what is so 
rare — the attribute of being true friends. He did ample jus- 
tice to their kindliness of heart. " If you meet with an acci- 
dent," he said, " half Edinburgh immediately flocks to your 
doors to inquire after your pure hand, or your •pure foot." 
"Their temper," he observed, " stands any thing but an attack 
on their climate ; even Jeffrey can not shake off" the illusion 
that myrtles flourish at Craig Crook." The sharp reviewer 
stuck to his myrtle allusions, and treated Smith's attempts with 
as much contempt as if he had been a " wild visionary, who 
had never breathed his caller air," nor suffered under the rigors 
of his climate, nor spent five years in " discussing metaphysics 
and medicine in that garret end of the earth — that knuckle 
end of England — that land of Calvin, oat-cakes, and sulphur, 5 ' 
as Smith termed Scotland. 

During two years he braved the winters in which he de- 
clared hackney-coaches were drawn by four horses on account 
of the snow ; where men were blown flat down on the face 
by the winds ; and where even " experienced Scotch fowls 
did not dare to cross the streets, but sidled along, tails aloft, 
without venturing to encounter the gale." He luxuriated, 
nevertheless, in the true Scotch supper, than which nothing 
more pleasant and more unwholesome has ever been known in 
Christendom. Edinburgh is said to have been the only place 
where people dined twice a day. The writer of this memoir 
is old enough to remember the true Scottish Attic supper be- 
fore its final " fading into wine and water," as Lord Cockburn 



THE MEN OF MARK PASSING AWAY. 439 

describes its decline. " Suppers," Cockburn truly says, " are 
cheaper than dinners," and Edinburgh, at that time, was the 
cheapest place in Great Britain. Port and sherry were the sta- 
ple wines ; claret, duty free in Scotland until 1780, was indeed 
beginning to be a luxury ; it was no longer the ordinary bev- 
erage, as it was when — as Mackenzie, the author of the " Man 
of Feeling," described — it used, upon the arrival of a cargo, 
to be sent through the town on a cart with a horse before it, 
so that every one might have a sample, by carrying a jug to 
be filled for sixpence : still even at the end of the eighteenth 
century it was in frequent use. Whisky toddy and plotty (red 
wine mulled with spices) came into the supper-room in ancient 
flagons or stoiqM, after a lengthy repast of broiled chickens, 
roasted moorfowl, pickled mussels, flummery, and numerous 
other good things had been discussed by a party who ate as 
if they had not dined that day. " We will eat," Lord Cock- 
burn used to say after a long walk, " a profligate supper," a 
supper without regard to discretion or digestion ; and he usu- 
ally kept his word. 

In Edinburgh, Sydney Smith formed the intimate acquaint- 
ance of Lord Jeffrey, and that acquaintance ripened into a 
friendship only closed by death. The friendship of worthy, 
sensible men he looked upon as one of the greatest pleasures 
in life. 

The " old suns," Lord Cockburn tells us, " were setting when 
the band of great thiukers and great writers, who afterward 
concocted the ' Edinburgh Review,' were rising into celebrity." 
Principal Robertson, the historian, had departed this life in 
1793, a kindly old man. With beaming eyes underneath his 
frizzed and curled wig, and a trumpet tied with a black ribbon 
to the button-hole of his coat, for he was deaf, this most excel- 
lent of writers showed how he could be also the most zealous 
of diners. Old Adam Ferguson, the historian of Rome, had 
"set" also: one of the finest specimens of humanity had gone 
from among his people in him. Old people, not thirty years 
ago, delighted to tell you how " Adam," when chaplain to the 
Black Watch, that glorious 42d, refused to retire to his prop- 
er place, the rear, during an action, but persisted in being en- 
gaged in front. He was also gone ; and Dugald Stewart filled 
his vacant place in the professorship of moral philosophy. Dr. 
Henry, the historian, was also at rest : after a long, laborious 
life, and the compilation of a dull, though admirable History 
of England, the design of which, in making a chapter on arts, 
manners, and literature separate from the narrative, appears to 
have suggested to Macaulay his inimitable disquisition on the 
same topics. Dr. Henry showed to a friend a pile of books 



440 THE BAND OF 5TOUNU SPIRITS. 

which he had gone through merely to satisfy himself and the 
world as to what description of trowsers was worn by the 
Saxons. His death was calm as his life. "Come out to me 
directly," he wrote to his friend, Sir Harry Moncrieff : " I have 
got something to do this week ; I have got to die." 

It was in 1801 that Dugald Stewart began his course of 
lectures on political economy. Hitherto all public favor had 
been on the side of the Tories, and independence of thought 
was a sure way to incur discouragement from the Bench, in 
the Church, and from every government functionary. Lec- 
tures on political economy were regarded as innovations ; but 
they formed a forerunner of that event which had made sev- 
eral important changes in our literary and political hemisphere : 
the commencement of the " Edinburgh Review." This under- 
taking was the work of men who were separated from the 
mass of their brother-townsmen by their politics, their isola- 
tion as a class binding them the more closely together by links 
never broken, in a brotherhood of hope and ambition to which 
the natural spirits of Sydney Smith, of Cockburn, and of Jef- 
frey gave an irresistible charm. 

Among those who the most early in life ended a career of 
promise was Francis Horner. He was the son of a linen-dra- 
per in Edinburgh ; or, as the Scotch called it, following the 
French, a merchant. Horner's best linen for sheets, and table- 
cloths, and all the tender garments of housekeeping, are still 
highly esteemed by the trade. 

" My desire to know Horner," Sydney Smith states, " arose 
from my being cautioned against him by some excellent and 
feeble-minded people to whom I brought letters of introduc- 
tion, and who represented him as a person of violent political 
opinions." Sydney Smith interpreted this to mean that Hor- 
ner was a man who thought for himself; who loved truth bet- 
ter than he loved Dundas (Lord Melville), then the tyrant of 
Scotland. "It is very curious to consider," Sydney Smith 
wrote, in addressing Lady Holland, in 1817, "in what manner 
Horner gained, in so extraordinary a degree, the affections of 
such a number of persons of both sexes — all ages, parties, and 
ranks in society ; for he was not remarkably good-tempered, 
nor particularly lively and agreeable ; and an inflexible poli- 
tician on the unpopular side. The causes are, his high charac- 
ter for probity, honor, and talents ; his flue countenance ; the 
benevolent interest he took in the concerns of all his friends ; 
his simple and gentlemanlike manners; his untimely death." 
" Grave, studious, honorable, kind, every thing Horner did," 
says Lord Cockburn, " was marked by thoughtfulness and 
kindness ;" a beautiful character, which was exhibited but 



brougham's early tenacity. 441 

briefly to his contemporaries, but long remembered after his 
death. 

Henry Brougham was another of the Edinburgh band of 
young spirits. He was educated in the High School under 
Luke Fraser, the tutor who trained Walter Scott and Francis 
Jeffrey. Brougham used to be pointed out "as the fellow 
who had beat the master." He had dared to differ with Fra- 
ser, a hot pedant, on some piece of Latinity. Fraser, irritated, 
punished the rebel, and thought the matter ended. But the 
next day " Harry," as they called him, appeared, loaded with 
books, renewed the charge, and forced Luke to own that he 
was beaten. "It was then," says Lord Cockburn, "that I 
first saw him." 

After remaining two years in Edinburgh, Sydney Smith 
went southward to marry a former schoolfellow of his sister 
Maria's — a Miss Pybus, to whom he had been attached and 
engaged at a very early period of his life. The young lady, 
who was of West Indian descent, had some fortune ; but her 
husband's only stock, on which to begin housekeeping, consist- 
ed of six silver tea-spoons, worn away with use. One day he 
rushed into the room and threw these attenuated articles into 
her lap : " There, Kate, I give you all my fortune, you lucky 
girl !" 

With the small dot, and the thin silver spoons, the young 
couple set up housekeeping in the "garret end of the earth." 
Their first difficulty was to know how money could be obtained 
to begin with, for Mrs. Smith's small fortune was settled on 
herself by her husband's wish. Two rows of pearls had been 
given her by her thoughtful mother. These she converted 
into money, and obtained for them £500. Several years after- 
ward, when visiting the shop at which she sold them, with 
Miss Vernon and Miss Fox, Mrs. Smith saw her pearls, every 
one of which she knew. She asked what was the price. 
"£1500" was the reply. 

The sum, however, was all important to the thrifty couple. 
It distanced the nightmare of the poor and honest — debt. 
£750 was presented by Mr. Beach, in gratitude for the care 
of his son, to Smith. It was invested in the funds, and formed 
the nucleus of future savings — " Ce rfest que le premier pas 
qui route,'''' is a trite saying. " C'est le premier pas quigagne" 
might be applied to this and similar cases. A little daughter 
— Lady Holland, the wife of the celebrated physician, Sir Hen- 
ry Holland — was sent to bless the sensible pair. Sydney had 
wished that she might be born with one eye, so that he might 
never lose her ; nevertheless, though she happened to be born 
with two, he bore her secretly from the nursery, a few hours 

t 2 



442 " OLD SCHOOL" CEREMONIES. 

after her birth, to show her in triumph to the future Edinburgh 
Reviewers. 

The birth of the " Edinburgh Review" quickly followed that 
of the young lady. Jeffrey — then an almost starving barris- 
ter, living in the eighth or ninth flat of a house in Buccleuch 
Place — Brougham, and Sydney Smith were the triumvirate 
who propounded the scheme, Smith being the first mover. Pie 
proposed a motto : " Tenui Musam meditamur avena :" We 
cultivate literature on a little oatmeal ; but this being too near 
the truth, they took their motto from Publius Syrus ; '-' of 
whom," said Smith, " none of us had, I am sure, read a single 
line." To this undertaking Sydney Smith devoted his talents 
for more than twenty-eight years. 

Meantime, during the brief remainder of his stay in Edin- 
burgh, his circumstances improved. He had done that which 
most of the clergy are obliged to do — taken a pupil. He had 
now another, the son of Mr. Gordon, of Ellon ; for each of these 
young men he received £400 a year. He became to them a 
father and a friend ; he entered into all their amusements. One 
of them saying that he could not find conversation at the balls 
for his partners; "Never mind," cried Sydney Smith, "I'll fit 
you up in five minutes." Accordingly, he wrote down conver- 
sations for them amid bursts of laughter. 

Thus happily did years, which many persons would have 
termed a season of adversity, pass away. The chance which 
brought him to Edinburgh introduced him to a state of soci- 
ety never likely to .be seen again in Scotland. Lord Cock- 
burn's "Memorials" afford an insight into manners, not only 
as regarded suppers, but on the still momentous point, of din- 
ners. Three o'clock was the fashionable hour so late as the 
commencement of the present century. That hour, " not with- 
out groans and predictions," became four — and four was long 
and conscientiously adhered to. " Inch by inch," people yield- 
ed, and five continued to be the standard polite hour from 
1806 to 1820. "Six has at length prevailed." 

The most punctilious ceremony existed. When dinner was 
announced, a file of ladies went first in strict order of prece- 
dence. " Mrs. Colonel Such a One ;" " Mrs. Doctor Such a 
One," and so on. Toasts were cle rigueur : no glass of wine 
was to be taken by a guest without comprehending a lady, or 
a covey of ladies. "I was present," says Lord Cockburn, 
" when the late Duke of Buccleuch took a glass of sherry by 
himself at the table of Charles Hope, then Lord Advocate, and 
this was noticed as a piece of ducal contempt." Toasts, and, 
when the ladies had retired, rounds of toasts, were drunk. 
" The prandial nuisance," Lord Cockburn wrote, " was horri- 
ble. But it was nothing to what followed." 



THE SPECULATIVE SOCIETY. 4-ki 

At these repasts, though less at these than at boisterous 
suppers, a frequent visitor at the same table with Sydney 
Smith was the illustrious Sir James Mackintosh, a man to 
whose deep-thinking mind the world is every day rendering- 
justice. The son of a brave officer, Mackintosh was born on 
the banks of Loch Ness : his mother, a Miss Fraser, was aunt 
to Mrs. Fraser Tytler, wife of Lord Woodhouselee, one of the 
judges of the Court of Session, and mother of the late histo- 
rian of that honored name. 

Mackintosh had been studying at Aberdeen, in the same 
classes with Robert Hall, whose conversation, he avowed, had 
a great influence over his mind. He arrived in Edinburgh 
about 1784, uncertain to what profession to belong, somewhat 
anxious to be a bookseller, in order to revel in " the paradise 
of books ;" he turned his attention, however, to medicine, and 
became a Brunonian, that is, a disciple of John Brown, the 
founder of a theory which he followed out to the extent in 
practice. The main feature of the now defunct system, which 
set scientific Europe in a blaze, seems to have been a mad in- 
dulgence of the passions, and an unbridled use of intoxicating 
liquors. Brown fell a victim to his vices. Years after he had 
been laid in his grave, his daughter, Euphemia, being in great 
indigence, received real kindness from Sir James and Lady 
Mackintosh, the former of whom used to delight in telling a 
story of her father's saying to her, " Effy, bring me the mood- 
erate stimulus of a hoondred draps o' laudanum in a glass o' 
brandy." 

Mackintosh had not quitted Edinburgh when Sydney Smith 
reached it. Smith became a member of the famous Specula- 
tive Society. Their acquaintance was renewed years after- 
ward in London. Who can ever forget the small, quiet din- 
ners given by Mackintosh when living out of Parliament, and 
out of office, in Cadogan Place ? Simple but genial were those 
repasts, forming a strong contrast to the Edinburgh dinners 
of yore. He had then long given up both the theory and prac- 
tice of the Brunonians, and took nothing but light French and 
German wines, and these in moderation. His tall, somewhat 
high-shouldered, massive form ; his calm brow, mild, thought- 
ful ; his dignity of manner, his gentleness to all ; his vast knowl- 
edge ; his wonderful appreciation of excellence ; his discrimi- 
nation of faults — all combined to form one of the finest speci- 
mens ever seen even in that illustrious period, of a philosopher 
and historian. 

Jeffrey and Cockburn were contrasts to one whom they hon- 
ored. Jeffrey, " the greatest of British critics," was eight 
years younger than Mackintosh, having been born in 1773. 



444 A BRILLIANT >ET. 

Lit- was the son of one of the deputy clerks to the Supreme 
Court, not an elevated position, though one of great respecta- 
bility. "When Mackintosh and Sydney Smith tirst knew him 
in Edinburgh, he was enduring, with all the impatience of his 
sensitive nature, what he called a " slow, obscure, philosophical 
starvation" at the Scotch bar. 

" There are moments,"' he wrote, " when I think I could sell 
myself to the ministers or to the devil, in order to get above 
these necessities."' Like all men so situated, his depression 
came in tits. Short, spare, Avith regular, yet not aristocratic 
features, speaking, brilliant, yet not pleasing eyes : a voice con- 
art with that mignon form; a somewhat precise and anx- 
ious manner, there was never in Jetfrey that charm, that aban- 
. which rendered his valued friend, Henry Cockburn, the 
most delightful, the most beloved of men, the very idol of his 
native city. 

The noble head of Cockburn, bald, almost in youth, with its 
pliant, refined features, and its fresh tint upon a cheek always 
clear, generally high in color, was a strong contrast to the rigid 
of Jeffrey's physiognomy ; inuchniore so to the large 
proportions of Mackintosh ; or to the ponderous, plain, and. 
later in life, swarthy countenance of Sydney Smith. Lord 
Webb Seymour, the brother of the late Duke of Somerset, 
gentle, modest, intelligent — Thomas Thomson, the antiquary 
— and Charles and George Bell, the surgeon and the advocate 
— Murray, afterward Lord Murray, the generous pleader, who 
gave up to its rightful heirs an estate left him by a client — 
and Brougham — formed the staple of that set now long since 
extinct. 

It was partially broken up by Sydney Smith's coming, in 
. to London. He there took a house in Doughty Street. 
beine partial to legal society, which was chiefly to be found in 
that neighbor!. 

Here Sir Samuel Romilly, Mackintosh, Scarlett (Lord Abin- 
. the eccentric unhappy Mr. Ward, afterward Lord Dud- 
. •■ Conversation" Sharp. Rogers, and Luttrell, formed the 
circle in which Sydney delighted. He was still very poor, and 
obliged to sell the rest of his wife's jewels ; but his brother 
Robert allowed him £100 a year, and lent him, when he sub- 
sequently removed into Yorkskr. 

He had now a life of struggling, but those struggles were 
the lot of his early friends also : Mackintosh talked of going 
to India as a lecturer : Smith recommended Jeffrey to do the 
same. Happily, both had the courage and the sense to await 
for better times at home ; yet Smith's opinion of Mackintosh 
was. that " he never saw so theoretical a head which contained 
so much practical understanding:" and to Jeffrey he wrote: 



HOLLAND HOL'sK. I 15 

" You want nothing- to be a great lawyer, and nothing to 
be a great speaker, but a deeper voice — slower and more sim- 
ple utterance — more humility of face and neck — and a greater 
contempt for esprit than men who have so much in general at- 
tain to." 

The great event of Sydney Smith's first residence in London 
was his introduction at Holland House ; in that " gilded room 
which furnished," as he said, "the best and most agreeable 
society in the world," his happiest hours Avere passed. John 
Allen," whom Smith had introduced to Lord Holland, was the 
peer's librarian and friend. Mackintosh, who Sydney Smith 
thought only wanted a few bad qualities to get on in the world, 
Rogers, Luttrell, Sheridan, Byron, were among the "suns" that 
shone where Addison had suffered and studied. 

Between Lbrd Holland and Sydney Smith the most cordial 
friendship existed ; and the eccentric and fascinating Lady Hol- 
land was his constant correspondent. Of this able woman it 
was said by Talleyrand : u Elle est toute assertion ; mais quancl 
on demande la preuve c'est la son, secret." Of Lord Holland, 
the keen diplomatist observed : "C'est la bienveillance meme, 
mais la bienveillance la plus perturbatrice, cpCon ait jamais 
viie" 

Lord Holland did not commit the error ascribed by Rogers, 
in his Recollections, to Marlay, Bishop of Waterford, avIio, 
when poor, with an income of only £400 a year, used to give 
the best dinners possible ; but, when made a bishop, enlarged 
his table, and lost his fame — had no more good company — 
there was an end of his enjoyment: he had lords and ladies to 
his table — foolish people — foolish men — and foolish women — 
and there was an end of him and us. "Lord Holland selected 
his lords and ladies, not for their rank, but for their peculiar 
merits or acquirements." Then even Lady Holland's oddities 
were amusing. When she wanted to get rid of a fop, she 
used to say, "I beg your pardon, but I wish you would sit n 
little farther off; there is something on your handkerchief 
which I don't quite like." Or when a poor man happened to 
stand, after the fashion of the lords of creation, with his back 
to the chimney-piece, she would cry out, " Have the goodness, 
sir, to stir the fire." 

Lord Holland never asked any one to dinner ("not even 
me" says Rogers, " whom he had known so long") without 
asking Lady Holland. One day, shortly before his lordship's 
death, Rogers was coming out from Holland House when he 
met him. "'Well, do you return to dinner?' I answered, 
' No, I have not been invited.' " The precaution, in fact, was 
necessarv, for Lord Holland was so good-natured and hospita- 



446 PREACHER AT THE "FOUNDLING." 

ble that he would have had a crowd daily at his table had he 
been left to himself. 

The death of Lord Holland completely broke up the unri- 
valed dinners, and the subsequent evenings in the "gilded 
chamber." Lady Holland, to whom Holland House was left 
for her lifetime, declined to live there. With Holland House, 
the mingling of aristocracy with talent ; the blending ranks by 
force of intellect ; the assembling, not only of all the celebrity 
that Europe could boast, but of all that could enhance private 
enjoyment, has ceased. London, the most intelligent of capi- 
tals, possesses not one single great house in which pomp and 
wealth are made subsidiary to the true luxury of intellectual 
conversation. 

On the morning of the day when Lord Holland's last illness 
began, these lines were written by him, and found after his 
death on his dressing-table : 

"Nephew of Fox, and friend of Grey, 
Sufficient for my fame ; 
If those who know me best shall say 
I tarnished neither name." 

Of him his best friend, Sydney Smith, left a short but discrim- 
inative character. " There was never (among other things he 
says) a better heart, or one more purified from all the bad pas- 
sions — more abounding in charity and compassion — or which 
seemed to be so created as a refuge to the helpless and op- 
pressed." 

Meantime Sydney Smith's circumstances were still limited ; 
£50 a year as evening preacher to the Foundling Hospital 
was esteemed as a great help by him. The writer of this 
memoir remembers an amusing anecdote related of him at 
the table of an eminent literary character by a member of 
Lord Woodhouselee's family, who had been desirous to ob- 
tain for Sydney the patronage of the godly. To this end she 
persuaded Robert Grant and Charles Grant (afterward Lord 
Glenelg) to go to the Foundling to hear him, she hoped, to 
advantage ; to her consternation he broke forth into so famil- 
iar a strain, couched in terms so bordering on the jocose — 
though no one had deeper religious convictions than he had — 
that the two saintly brothers listened in disgust. They for- 
got how South let loose the powers of his wit and sarcasm ; 
and how the lofty-minded Jeremy Taylor applied the force of. 
humor to lighten the prolixity of argument. Sydney Smith 
became, nevertheless, a most popular preacher ; but the man 
who prevents people from sleeping once a week in their pews 
is sure to be criticised. 

Let xis turn to him, however, as a member of societv. His 







. 



!H^ 



mgg^K'M 




lHWIX 81' E.N E AT SYDNEY S.MITI 



Sydney's " grammar of life." 449 

circle of acquaintance was enlarged, not only by his visits to 
Holland House, but by his lectures on moral philosophy at the 
Royal Institution. Sir Robert Peel, not the most impression- 
able of men, but one whose cold shake of the hand is said — as 
Sydney Smith said of Sir James Mackintosh — " to have come 
under the genus Mortmain" was a very young man at the 
time when Albemarle Street was crowded with carriages from 
one end of the street to the other, in consequence of Sydney 
Smith's lectures ; yet he declared that he had never forgotten 
the effect given to the speech of Logan, the Indian chief, by 
Sydney's voice and manner. 

His lectures produced a sum sufficient for Sydney to furnish 
a house in Orchard Sti*eet. Doughty Street — raised to celeb- 
rity as having been the residence, not only of Sydney Smith, 
but of Charles Dickens — was too far for the habitue, of Hol- 
land House and the orator of Albemarle Street long to sojourn 
there. In Orchard Street Sydney enjoyed that domestic com- 
fort which he called the " grammar of life ;" delightful suppers 
to about twenty or thirty persons, who came and went as they 
pleased. A great part of the same amusing and gifted set used 
to meet once a week also at Sir James Mackintosh's at a supper, 
which, though not exactly Cowper's " radish and an egg," was 
simple but plentiful — yet most eagerly sought after. "There 
are few living," writes Sydney Smith's daughter, "who can look 
back to them, and I have always found them do so w T ith a sigh 
of regret." 

One night, a country cousin of Sydney Smith's was present 
at a supper. " Now, Sydney," whispered the simple girl, " I 
know all these are very remarkable people ; do tell me who 
they are." " Oh, yes ; there's Hannibal," pointing to a grave, 
dry, stern man, Mr. Whishaw ; " he lost his leg in the Cartha- 
ginian war: there's Socrates," pointing to Luttrell: "that," he 
added, turning to Horner, "is Solon." 

Another evening, Mackintosh brought a raw Scotch cousin 
— an ensign in a Highland regiment — with him. The young 
man's head could carry no idea of glory except in regiment- 
als. Suddenly, nudging Sir James, he whispered, " Is that the 
great Sir Sidney Smith?" "Yes, yes," answered Sir James; 
and instantly telling Sydney who he was supposed to be, the 
grave evening jjreacher at the Foundling immediately assumed 
the character ascribed to him, and acted the hero of Acre to 
perfection, fighting his battles over again — even charging the 
Turks — while the young Scot was so enchanted by the great 
Sir Sidney's condescension, that he wanted to fetch the pip- 
ers of his regiment, and pipe to the great Sir Sydney, who had 
never enjoyed the agonizing strains of the bagpipe. Upon this 



4 30 THE PICTURE MANIA. 

the party broke up, and Sir James carried the Highlander oft', 
lest he should find out his mistake, and cut his throat from shame 
and vexation. One may readily conceive Sydney Smith's en- 
joying this joke, for his spirits were those of a boy: his gayety 
was irresistible ; his ringing laugh, infectious ; but it is difficult 
for those who knew Mackintosh in his later years — the quiet, al- 
most pensive invalid — to realize in that remembrance any trace 
of the Mackintosh of Doughty Street and Orchard Street days. 

One day Sydney Smith came home with two hackney-coach- 
es full of pictures, which he had picked up at an auction. His 
daughter thus tells the story : " Another day he came home 
with two hackney-coach loads of pictures, which he had met 
with at an auction, having found it impossible to resist so many 
yards of brown-looking figures and faded landscapes going for 
' absolutely nothing, unheard-of sacrifices.' ' Kate' hardly knew 
whether to laugh or cry when she saw these horribly dingy- 
looking objects enter her pretty little drawing-room, and look- 
ed at him as if she thought him half mad; and half mad he was, 
but with delight at his purchase. He kept walking up and 
down the room, waving his arms, putting them in fresh lights, 
declaring they were exquisite specimens of art, and if not by 
the very best masters, merited to be so. He invited his friends, 
and displayed his pictures ; discovered fresh beauties for each 
new comer ; and for three or four days, under the magic influ- 
ence of his wit and imagination, these gloomy old pictures were 
a perpetual source of amusement and fun." 

At last, finding that he was considered no authority for the 
fine arts, off went the pictures to another auction, but all re- 
christened by himself with unheard-of names. " One, I remem- 
ber," says Lady Holland, " was a beautiful landscape, by Nich- 
olas de Falda, a pupil of Valdezzio, the only painting by that em- 
inent artist. The pictures sold, I believe, for rather less than 
he gave for them under their original names, which were prob- 
ably as real as their assumed ones." 

Sydney Smith had long been styled by his friends the "Bish- 
op of Mickleham," in allusion to his visits to, and influence in, 
the house of his friend, Richard Sharp, who had a cottage at 
that place. A piece of real preferment was now his. This was 
the living of Foston le Clay, in Yorkshire, given him by Lord 
Erskine, then Chancellor. Lady Holland never rested till she 
had prevailed on Erskine to give Sydney Smith a living. Smith, 
as Rogers relates, went to thank his lordship. " Oh," said Er- 
skine, " don't thank me, Mr. Smith ; I gave you the living be- 
cause Lady Holland insisted on my doing so ; and if she had 
desired me to give it to the devil, he must have had it." 

Notwithstanding the prediction of the saints, Sydney Smith 



THE WIT'S MINISTRY. 451 

proved an excellent parish priest. Even his most admiring 
friends did not expect this result. The general impression 
was, that he was infinitely better fitted for the bar than for 
the Church. " Ah ! Mr. Smith," Lord Stowell used to say to 
him, " you would be in a far better situation, and a far richer 
man, had you belonged to us." 

One jeu cV esprit more, and Smith hastened to take posses- 
sion of his living, and to enter upon duties of which no one 
better knew the mighty importance than he did. 

Among the Mackintosh set was Richard Sharp, to whom 
we have already referred, termed, from his great knowledge 
and ready memory, " Conversation Sharp." Many people may 
think that this did not imply an agreeable man, and they were, 
perhaps, right. Sharp was a plain, ungainly man. One even- 
ing, a literary lady, now living, was at Sir James Mackin- 
tosh's, in company with Sharp, Sismondi, and the late Lord 
Denman, then a man of middle age. Sir James was not only 
particularly partial to Denman, but admired him personally. 
"Do you not think Denman handsome?" he inquired of the 
lady after the guests were gone. "No? Then you must think 
Mr. Sharp handsome," he rejoined; meaning that a taste so per- 
verted as not to admire Denman must be smitten with Sharp. 
Sharp is said to have studied all the morning before he went 
out to dinner, to get up his wit and anecdote, as an actor does 
his part. Sydney Smith having one day received an invitation 
from him to dine at Fishmongers' Hall, sent the following re- 
ply: 

' ' Much do I love 
The monsters of the deep to eat ; 
To see the rosy salmon lying, 
By smelts encircled, horn for frying ; 
And from the china boat to pour 
On flaky cod the flavored shower. 
Thee above all I much regard, 
Flatter than Longman's flattest bard, 
Much honor'd turbot ! sore I grieve 
Thee and thy dainty friends to leave. 
Far from ye all, in snuggest corner, 
I go to dine with little Horner; 
He who with philosophic eye 
Sat brooding o'er his Christmas pie ; 
Then firm resolved, with cither thumb, 
Tore forth the crust-enveloped plum ; 
And mad with youthful dreams of deathless fame, 
Proclaimed the deathless glories of his name." 

One word before we enter on the subject of Sydney Smith's 
ministry. In this biography of a great Wit, we touch but 
lightly upon the graver features of his character, yet they can 
not wholly be passed over. Stanch in Ins devotion to the 



452 THE FIRST VISIT TO FOSTON LE CLAY. 

Church of England, he was liberal to others. The world in 
the present day is afraid of liberality. Let it not be forgotten 
that it has been the fanatic and the intolerant, not the mild 
and practical among us who have gone from the Protestant 
to the Romish faith. Sydney Smith, in common with other 
great men, had no predilection for dealing damnation round 
the land. How noble, how true, are Mackintosh's reflections 
on religious sects ! " It is impossible, I think, to look into the 
interior of any religious sect without thinking better of it. I 
ought, indeed, to confine myself to those of Christian Europe, 
but with that limitation it seems to me the remark is true, 
whether I look at the Jansenists of Port Royal, or the Quakers 
in Clarkson, or the Methodists in these journals. All these 
sects, which appear dangerous or ridiculous at a distance, as- 
sume a much more amicable character on nearer inspection. 
They all inculcate pure virtue, and practise mutual kindness ; 
and they exert great force of reason in rescuing their doctrines 
from the absurd or pernicious consequences which naturally 
flow from them. Much of this arises from the general nature 
of religious principle — much also from the genius of the Gos- 
pel." 

Nothing could present a greater contrast with the comforts 
of Orchard Street than the place on which Sydney Smith's 
" lines" had now " fallen." Owing to the non-residence of the 
clergy, one third of the parsonage-houses in England had fall- 
en into decay, but that of Foston le Clay was pre-eminently 
wretched. A hovel represented what was still called the par- 
sonage-house : it stood on a glebe of three hundred acres of 
the stiflest clay in Yorkshire : a brick-floored kitchen, with a 
room above it, both in a ruinous condition, was the residence 
Which, for a hundred and fifty years, had never been inhabited 
by an incumbent. It will not be a matter of surprise that for 
some time, until 1808, Sydney Smith, with the permission of 
the Archbishop of York, continued to reside in London, after 
having appointed a curate at Foston le Clay. 

The first visit to his living was by no means promising. 
Picture to yourself, my reader, Sydney Smith, in a carriage, in 
his superfine black coat, driving into the remote village, and 
parleying with the old parish clerk, who, after some conversa- 
tion, observed, emphatically, striking his stick on the ground, 
" Master Smith, it stroikes me that people as comes froe Lon- 
don is such fools.'''' " I see you are no fool," was the prompt 
answer ; and the parson and the clerk parted mutually sat- 
isfied. 

The profits arising from the sale of two volumes of sermons 
carried Sydney Smith, his family, and his furniture to Foston 




B^KJSliY SMITHS WITTY AN'SWF.IS TO TUK OLD 1'AKISU CLKIili. 



COUNTRY QUIET. THE UNIVERSAL SCRATCHER. 455 

le Clay in the summer of 1809, and he took up his abode in a 
pleasant house about two miles from York, at Heslington. 

Let us now, for a time, forget the wit, the editor of the 
" Edinburgh Review," the diner out, the evening preacher at 
the Foundling, and glance at the peaceful and useful life of a 
country gentleman. His spirits, his wit, all his social qualities, 
never deserted Sydney Smith, even in the retreat to which .he 
was destined. Let us see him driving in his second-hand car- 
riage, his horse " Peter the Cruel," with Mrs. Smith by his 
side, summer and winter, from Heslington to Foston le Clay. 
Mrs. Smith at first trembled at the inexperience of her chariot- 
eer ; but " she soon," said Sydney, " raised my wages, and 
considered me an excellent Jehu." " Mr. Brown," said Syd- 
ney to one of the tradesmen of York, through the streets of 
which he found it difficult to drive, " your streets are the nar- 
rowest in Europe." " Narrow, sir ? there's plenty of room 
for two carriages to pass each other, and an inch and a half 
to spare !" 

Let us see him in his busy, peaceful life, digging an hour or 
two every day in his garden to avoid sudden death by pre- 
venting corpulency ; then galloping through a book, and when 
his family laughed at him for so soon dismissing a quarto, say- 
ing, " Cross-examine me, then," and going well through the 
ordeal. Hear him, after finishing his morning's writing, say- 
ing to his wife, " There, Kate, it's done ; do look over it, put 
the dots to the i's, and cross the t's ;" and off he went to his 
walk, surrounded by his children, who were his companions 
and confidants. See him in the lane, talking to an old woman 
whom he had taken into his gig as she was returning from 
market, and picking up all sorts of knowledge from her ; or 
administering medicine to the poor, or to his horses and ani- 
mals, sometimes committing mistakes next to fatal. One day 
he declared he found all his pigs intoxicated, grunting " God 
save the King" about the sty. He nearly poisoned his red 
cow by an over-dose of castor-oil ; and Peter the Cruel, so 
called because the groom said he had a cruel face, took two 
boxes of opium pills (boxes and all) in his mash Avithout ill 
consequences. 

See him, too, rushing out after dinner — for he had a hoi'ror 
of long sittings after that meal — to look at his "scratcher." 
He used to say, Lady Holland (his daughter) relates, " I am 
all for cheap luxuries, even for animals ; now all animals have 
a passion for scratching their back-bones ; they break down 
your gates and palings to effect this. Look ! there is my uni- 
versal scratcher, a sharp-edged pole, resting on a high and a 
low post, adapted to every height, from a horse to a lamb. 



456 COUNTRY LIFE AND COUNTRY PREJUDICE. 

Even the Edinburgh Reviewer can take his turn : you have no 
idea how popular it is ; I have not had a gate broken since I 
put it up ; I have it in all my fields." 

Then his experiments were numerous. Mutton fat was to be 
burned instead of candles ; and working people were brought 
in and fed with broth, or with rice, or with porridge, to see 
which was the most satisfying diet. Economy was made amus- 
ing, benevolence almost absurd, but the humorous man, the 
kind man, shone forth in all things. He was one of the first, 
if not the first, who introduced allotment-gardens for the poor : 
he was one who could truly say at the last, when he had lived 
sixty-six years, " I have done but very little harm in the world, 
and I have brought up my family." 

We have taken a glimpse — and a glimpse merely — of the 
" wise wit" in London, among congenial society, where every 
intellectual power was daily called forth in combative force. 
See him now in the provincial circles of the remote county of 
York. " Did you ever," he once asked, " dine out in the coun- 
try? What misery do human beings inflict on each other un- 
der the name of pleasure !" Then he describes driving in a 
broiling sun through a dusty road, to eat a haunch of venison 
at the house of a neighboring parson. Assembled in a small 
house, "redolent of frying," talked of roads, weather, and tur- 
nips : began, that done, to be hungry. A stripling, caught up 
for the occasion, calls the master of the house out of the room, 
and announces that the cook has mistaken the soup for dirty 
watex-, and thrown it away. No help for it — agreed: they 
must do without it ; perhaps as well they should. Diuner an- 
nounced ; they enter the dining-room : heavens ! what a gale ! 
the venison is high 1 

Various other adverse incidents occur, and the party return 
home, grateful to the post-boys for not being drunk, and thank- 
ful to Providence for not being thrown into a wet ditch. 

In addition to these troubles and risks, there was an enemy 
at hand to apprehend — prejudice. The Squire of Heslington 
— " the last of the Squires" — regarded Mr. Smith as a Jaco- 
bin ; and his lady, " who looked as if she had walked straight out 
of the Ark, or had been the wife of Enoch," used to turn aside 
as he passed. When, however, the squire found "the peace of 
the village undisturbed, harvests as usual, his dogs uninjured, 
he first bowed, then called, and ended by a pitch of confidence ;" 
actually discovered that Sydney Smith had made a joke ; near- 
ly went into convulsions of laughter, and finished by inviting 
the " dangerous fellow," as he had once thought him, to see his 
dogs. 

Tn 1813 Sydney Smith removed, as he thought it his duty 



THE GEXIAL MAGISTRATE. 457 

to do, to Foston le Clay, and, " not knowing a turnip from a 
carrot," began to farm three hundred acres, and, not having 
any money, to build a parsonage-house. 

It was a model parsonage, he thought, the plan being form- 
ed by himself and " Kate." Being advised by his neighbors 
to purchase oxen, he bought (and christened) four oxen, "Tug 
and Lug," "Crawl and Haul." But'Tug and Lug took to faint- 
ing, Haul and Crawl to lie down in the mud, so he was com- 
pelled to sell them, and to purchase a team of horses. 

The house plunged him into debt for tAventy years ; and a 
man-servant being too expensive, the " wise Wit" caught up 
a country girl, " made like a mile-stone," and christened her 
" Bunch," and Bunch became the best butler in the county. 

He next set up a carriage, which he christened the "Im- 
mortal," for it grew, from being only an ancient green chariot, 
supposed to have been the earliest invention of the kind, to be 
known by all the neighbors; the village dogs barked at it, the 
village boys cheered it, and " we had no false shame." 

One could linger over the annals of Sydney Smith's useful, 
happy life at Foston le Clay, visited there, indeed, by Mack- 
intosh, and each day achieving a higher and higher reputa- 
tion in literature. We see him as a magistrate, "no friend to 
game," as a country squire in Suffolk solemnly said of a neigh- 
bor, but a friend to man ; with a pitying heart, that forbade 
him to commit young delinquents to jail, though he would lec- 
ture them severely, and call out, in bad cases, " John, bring 
me out my fwivate gallon's" which brought the poor boys on 
their knees. We see him making visits, and even tours, in 
the "Immortal," and receiving Lord and Lady Carlisle in their 
coach and four, which had stuck in the middle of a plowed 
field, there being scarcely any road, only a lane up to the house. 
Behold him receiving his poor friend, Francis Horner, who 
came to take his last leave of him, and died at Pisa in 1817, 
after earning honors paid, as Sir James Mackintosh remarked, 
to intrinsic claims alone — " a man of obscure birth, who never 
filled an office." See Sydney Smith, in 1816, from the failure 
of the harvest (he who was in London "a walking patty"), sit- 
ting down with his family to repasts without bread, thin, un- 
leavened cakes being the substitute. See his cheerfulness, his 
submission to many privations : picture him to ourselves try- 
ing to ride, but falling off incessantly ; but obliged to leave off 
riding " for the good of his family and the peace of his parish" 
(he had christened his horse Calamity). See him suddenly 
prostrate from that steed in the midst of the streets of York, 
" to the great joy of Dissenters," he declares : another time 
flung, as if he had been a shuttlecock, into a neighboring par- 



458 GLIMPSE OF EDINBUEGH SOCIETY. 

ish, very glad that it was not a neighboring planet, for some- 
how or other his horse and he had a " trick of parting com- 
pany." " I used," he wrote, " to think a fall from a horse 
dangerous, but much experience has convinced me to the con- 
trary. I have had six falls in two years, and just behaved 
like the Three per Cents., when they fell — I got up again, and 
am not a bit the worse for it, any more than the stock in ques- 
tion." 

His country life was varied by many visits. In 1820 he went 
to visit Lord Grey, then to Edinburgh, to Jeffrey. Traveling 
by the coach, a gentleman, with whom he had been talking, 
said, "There is a very clever fellow lives near here, Sydney 
Smith, I believe — a devilish odd fellow." "He may be an odd 
fellow," cried Sydney, taking off his hat, " but here he is, odd 
as he is, at your service." 

Sydney Smith found great changes in Edinburgh — changes, 
however, in many respects for the better. The society of Ed- 
inburgh was then in its greatest perfection. " Its brilliancy," 
Lord Cockburn remarks, " was owing to a variety of peculiar 
circumstances, which only operated during this period." The 
principal of these were " the survivance of several of the emi- 
nent men of the preceding age, and of curious old habits, which 
the modern flood had not yet obliterated ; the rise of a power- 
ful community of young men of ability ; the exclusion of the 
British from the Continent, which made this place, both for 
education and for residence, a favorite resort of strangers ; the 
Avar, which maintained a constant excitement of military prep- 
aration and of military idleness ; the blaze of that popular lit- 
erature which made this the second city in the empire for learn- 
ing and science ; and the extent and the ease w T ith which litera- 
ture and society embellished each other, without rivalry, and 
without pedantry." 

Among the " best young," as his lordship styles them, were 
Lord Webb Seymour and Francis Horner ; while those of the 
"interesting old" most noted were Elizabeth Hamilton and 
Mrs. Grant of Laggan, who had " unfolded herself," to bor- 
row Lord Cockburn's words, in the " Letters from the Mount- 
ains," " an interesting treasury of good solitary thoughts." Of 
these two ladies, Lord Cockburn says, " They were excellent 
women, aud not too blue. Their sense covered the color." It 
Avas to Mrs. Hamilton that Jeffrey said, " That there was no 
objection to the blue stocking, provided the petticoat came low 
enough to cover it." * Neither of these ladies possessed person- 
al attractions. Mrs. Hamilton had the plain face proper to lit- 
erary women ; Mrs. Grant Avas a tall, dark Avoman, Avith much 
diguity of manner : in spite of her life of misforttme, she had 



A PENSION DIFFICULTY. 4o',l 

a great flow of spirits. Beautifully, indeed, does Lord Cock- 
burn render justice to her character: " She was always under 
the influence of an affectionate and delightful enthusiasm, which, 
unquenched by time and sorrow, survived the wreck of many 
domestic attachments, and shed a glow over the close of a very 
protracted life." 

Both she and Mrs. Hamilton succeeded in drawing to their 
conversazioni, in small rooms of unpretending style, men of 
the highest order, as well as attractive women of intelligence. 
Society in Edinburgh took the form of Parisian soirees, and, 
although much divided into parties, was sufficiently general to 
be varied. It is amusing to find that Mrs. Grant was at one 
time one of the supposed " Authors of ' Waverley,' " until the 
disclosure of the mystery silenced reports. It was the popu- 
larity of " Marmion" that made Scott, as he himself confesses, 
nearly lose his footing. Mrs. Grant's observation on him, aft- 
er meeting the Great Unknown at some brilliant party, has 
been allowed, even by the sarcastic Lockhart, to be " witty 
enough." " Mr. Scott always seems to me to be like a glass, 
through which the rays of admiration pass without sensibly 
affecting it ; but the bit of paper* that lies beside it will pres- 
ently be in a blaze — and no wonder." 

Scott endeavored to secure Mrs. Grant a pension ; merited, 
as he observes, by her as an authoress, " but much more," in 
his opiuiou, "by the firmness and elasticity of mind with which 
she had borne a great succession of domestic calamities." 
"Unhappily," he adds, "there was only. about £100 open on 
the Pension List, and this the minister assigned in equal por- 
tions to Mrs. G and a distressed lady, granddaughter of a 

forfeited Scottish nobleman. Mrs. G , proud as a High- 
land woman, vain as a poetess, and absurd as a blue-stocking, 
has taken this partition in malam partem, and written to Lord 
Melville about her merits, and that her friends do not consider 
her claims as being fairly canvassed, with something like a de- 
mand that her petition be submitted to the king. This is not 

the way to make her placJc a bawbee, and Lord M , a little 

miffed in turn, sends the whole correspondence to me to know 

whether Mrs. G will accept the £50 or not. Now, hating 

to deal with ladies when they are in an unreasonable humor, I 
have got the good-humored Man of Feeling to find out the 
lady's mind, and I take on myself the task of making her peace 

with Lord M . After all, the poor lady is greatly to be 

pitied ; her sole remaining daughter deep and far gone in a 
decline." 

The Man of Feeling proved successful, and reported soon 
* Alluding to Lady Scott. 



4G0 JEFFREY AND COCKBURN. 

afterward that the " dirty pudding" was eaten by the almost 
destitute authoress. Scott's tone in the letters which refer to 
this subject does little credit to his good taste and delicacy of 
feeling, which were really attributable to his character. 

Very few notices occur of any intercourse between Scott 
and Sydney Smith in Loekhart's " Life." It was not, indeed, 
until 1827 that Scott could be sufficiently cooled down from 
the ferment of politics which had been going on to meet Jef- 
frey and Cockburn. When he dined, however, with Murray, 
then Lord Advocate, and met Jeffrey, Cockburn, the late Lord 
Rutherford, then Mr. Rutherford, and others of " that file," he 
pronounced the party to be " very pleasant, capital good cheer, 
and excellent wine, much laugh and fun. I do not know," he 
writes, "how it is, but when I am out with a party of my Op- 
position friends, the day is often merrier than when with our 
own set. Is it because they are cleverer? Jeffrey and Harry 
Cockburn are, to be sure, very extraordinary men, yet it is not 
owing to that entirely. I believe both parties meet with the 
feeling of something like novelty. We have not worn out our 
jests in daily contact. There is also a disposition on such oc- 
casions to be courteous, and of course to be pleased." 

On his side, Cockburn did ample justice to the " genius who," 
to use his own words, " has immortalized Edinburgh and de- 
lighted the world." Mrs. Scott could not, however, recover 
the smarting inflicted by the critiques of Jeffrey on her hus- 
band's works. Her " And I hope, Mr. Jeffrey, Mr. Constable 
paid you well for yoy** article" (Jeffrey dining with her that 
day), had a depth of simple satire in it that even an Edinburgh 
reviewer could hardly exceed. It was, one must add, imperti- 
nent and in bad taste. " You are very good at cutting up." 

Sydney Smith found Jeffrey and Cockburn rising barristers. 
Horner, on leaving Edinburgh, had left to Jeffrey his bar wig, 
and the bequest had been lucky. Jeffrey was settled at Craig- 
crook, a lovely English-looking spot, with wooded slopes and 
green glades, near Edinburgh ; and Cockburn had, since 1811, 
set up "his rural gods at Bonally, near Colinton, just under the 
Pentland Hills, and he wrote, " Unless some avenging angel 
shall expel me, I shall never leave that Paradise." And a par- 
adise it was. Beneath those rough, bare hills, broken here 
and there by a trickling burn, like a silver thread on the brown 
sward, stands a Norman tower, the addition, by Playfair's skill, 
to what'was once a scarcely-habitable farm-house. That tower 
contained Lord Cockburn's fine library, also his ordinary sit- 
ting-rooms. There he read, and wrote, and received such so- 
ciety as will never meet again, there or elsewhere — among 
them Sydney Smith. Beneath — around the tower — stretches 



BON ALLY. 401 

a delicious garden, composed of terraces, and laurel-hedged 
walks, and beds of flowers, that blossomed freely in that shel- 
tered spot. A bowling-green, shaded by one of the few trees 
near the house, a sycamore, was the care of many an hour ; for, 
to make the turf velvety, the sods were fetched from the hills 
above — from " yon hills," as Lord Cockburn would have called 
them. And this was, for many years, one of the rallyiug-points 
of the best Scottish society, and, as each autumn came round, 
of what the host called his carnival. Friends were summoned 
from the north and the south — " death no apology." High 
jinks within doors, excursions without. Every Edinburgh 
man reveres the spot, hallowed by the remembrance of Lord 
Cockburn. "Every thing except the two burns," he wrote, 
"the few old trees, and the mountains, are my own Avork. 
Human nature is incapable of enjoying more happiness than 
has been my lot here. I have been too happy, and often trem- 
ble in the anticipation that the cloud must come at last." And 
come it did ; but found him not unprepared, although the bur- 
den that he had to bear in after life was heavy. In their en- 
larged and philosophic minds, in their rapid transition from 
sense to nonsense, there was an affinity in the character of 
Sydney Smith and of Lord Cockburn which was not carried 
out in any other point. Smith's conversation was wit — Lord 
Cockburn's was eloquence. 

From the festivities of Edinburgh Sydney Smith returned 
contentedly to Foston le Clay and to Bunch. Among other 
gifted visitors was Mrs. Marcet. " Come here, Bunch," cries 
Sydney Smith one day ; " come and repeat your crimes to Mrs. 
Marcet." Then Bunch, grave as a judge, began to repeat : 
" Plate-snatching, gravy-spilling, door-slamming, blue-bottle- 
fly catching, and courtesy-bobbing." "Blue-bottle-fly catch- 
ing" means standing with her mouth open, and not attending ; 
and " courtesy-bobbing" was courtesying to the centre of the 
earth. 

One night in the winter, during a tremendous snow-storm, 
Bunch rushed in, exclaiming, "Lord and Lady Mackincrush is 
com'd in a coach and four." The lord and lady proved to be 
Sir James and his daughter, who had arrived to stay with his 
friends in the remote parsonage of Foston le Clay a few days, 
and had sent a letter, which arrived the day afterward, to an- 
nounce their visit. Their stay began with a blunder; and 
when Sir James departed, leaving kind feelings behind him, 
books, his hat, his gloves, his papers, and other articles of ap- 
parel, were found also. " What a man that would be," said 
Sydney Smith, " had he one pai'ticle of gall, or the least knowl- 
edge of the value of red tape !" It was true that the indolent, 



462 HIS RHEUMATIC ARMOR. 

desultory character of Mackintosh interfered perpetually with 
his progress in the world. He loved far better to lie on the 
sofa reading a novel than to attend a Privy Council ; the slight- 
est indisposition was made on his part a plea for avoiding the 
most important business. 

Sydney Smith had said that when " a clever man takes to 
cultivating turnips and retiring, it is generally an imposture ;" 
but in him the retirement was no imposture. His wisdom 
shone forth daily in small and great matters. " Life," he just- 
ly thought, " was to be fortified by many friendships," and he 
acted up to his principles, and kept up friendships by letters. 
Cheerfulness he thought might be cultivated by making the 
rooms one lives in as comfortable as possible. His own draw- 
ing-room was papered, on this principle, with a yellow flower- 
ing pattern, and filled with " irregular regularities ;" his fires 
were blown into brightness by Shadrachs, as he called them 
— tubes furnished with air opening in the centre of each fire. 
His library contained his rheumatic armor ; for he tried heat 
and compression in rheumatism ; put his leg into narrow buck- 
ets, which he called his jack-boots ; wore round his throat a 
tin collar ; over each shoulder he had a large tin thing like a 
shoulder of mutton ; and on his head he displayed a hollow 
helmet filled with hot water. In the middle of a field into 
which his windows looked was a skeleton sort of a machine, 
his Universal Scratcher, with which every animal, from a lamb 
to a bullock, could scratch itself. Then on the Sunday the Im- 
mortal was called into use, to travel in state to a church like 
a barn ; about fifty people in it ; but the most original idea 
was farming through the medium of a tremendous speaking- 
trumpet from his own door, with its companion, a telescope, 
to see what his people are about ! On the 24th of January, 
1828, the first notable piece of preferment was conferred on 
him by Lord Lyndhurst, then Chancellor, and of widely differ- 
ing political opinions to Sydney Smith. This was a vacant 
stall in the cathedral at Bristol, where, on the ensuing 5th of 
November, the new canon gave the Mayor and Corporation 
of that Protestant city such a dose of " toleration as should 
last them many a year." He went to court on his appoint- 
ment, and appeared in shoestrings instead of buckles. " I 
found," he relates, "to my surprise, people looking down at 
my feet : I could not think what they were at. At first I 
thought they had discovered the beauty of my legs ; but at 
last the truth burst on me, by some wag laughing and think- 
ing I had done it as a good joke. I was, of course, exceeding- 
ly annoyed to have been supposed capable of such a vulgar, 
unmeaning piece of disrespect, and kept my feet as coyly un- 



NO BISHOPRIC. 463 

dcr my petticoats as the veriest prude in the country, till I 
should make my escape." His circumstances were now im- 
proved, and though moralists, he said, thought property an 
evil, he declared himself happier every guinea he gained. He 
thanked God for his animal spirits, which received, unhappi- 
ly, in 1829, a terrible shock from the death of his eldest son, 
Douglas, aged twenty-four. This was the great misfortune 
of his life ; the young man was promising, talented, affection- 
ate. He exchanged Foston le Clay at this time for a living in 
Somersetshire, of a beautiful and characteristic name — Combe 
Florey. 

Combe Florey seems to have been an earthly paradise, seat- 
ed in one of those delicious hollows, or combes, for which that 
part of the w T est of England is celebrated. His withdraw- 
al from the Edinburgh Review, Mackintosh's death, the mar- 
riage of his eldest daughter, Saba, to Dr. Holland (now Sir 
Henry Holland), the termination of Lord Grey's Administra- 
tion, which ended Sydney's hopes of being a bishop, were the 
leading events in his life for the next few years. 

It appears that Sydney Smith felt to the hour of his death 
pained that those by whose side he had fought for fifty years, 
in their adversity, the Whig party, should never have offered 
what he declared he should have rejected, a bishopric, when 
they were constantly bestowing such promotions on persons 
of mediocre talent and claims. Waiving the point whether 
it is right or wrong to make men bishops because they have 
been political partisans, the cause of this alleged injustice may 
be found in the tone of the times, which was eminently tinc- 
tured with cant. The Clapham sect were in the ascendency ; 
and Ministers scarcely dared to offend so influential a body. 
Even the gentle Sir James Mackintosh refers, in his Journal, 
with disgust to the phraseology 'of the day: 

" They have introduced a new language, in which they nev- 
er say that A. B. is good, or virtuous, or even religious ; but 
that he is an ' advanced Christian.' Dear Mr. Wilberforce is 
an ' advanced Christian.' Mrs. C. has lost three children with- 
out a pang, and is so ' advanced a Christian' that she could see 
the remaining twenty, ' with poor dear Mr. C.,' removed with 
perfect tranquillity." 

Such was the disgust expressed toward that school by Mack- 
intosh, whose last days were described by his daughter as hav- 
ing been passed in silence and thought, with his Bible before 
him, breaking that silence — and portentous silence — to speak 
of God, and of his Maker's disposition toward man. His mind 
ceased to be occupied with speculations ; politics interested him 
no more. His own " personal relationship to his Creator" was 



464 BECOMES CANON OP ST. PAUL'S. 

the subject of his thoughts. Yet Mackintosh was not by any 
means considered as an advanced Christian, or even as a Chris- 
tian at all by the zealots of his time. 

Sydney Smith's notions of a bishop were certainly by no 
means carried out in his own person and character. " I nev- 
er remember in my time," he said, " a real bishop ; a grave, 
elderly man, full of Greek, with sound views of the middle 
voice and preterpluperfect tense ; gentle and kind to his poor 
clergy, of powerful and commanding eloquence in Parliament, 
never to be put down when the great interests of society were 
concerned, leaning to the Government when it was right, lean- 
ing to the people when they were right; feeling that if the 
Spirit of God had called him to that high office, he was called 
for no mean purpose, but rather that seeing clearly, acting bold- 
ly, and intending purely, he might confer lasting benefit upon 
mankind." 

In 1831 Lord Grey appointed Sydney Smith a Canon Resi- 
dentiary of St. Paul's ; but still the mitre was withheld, al- 
though it has since appeared that Lord Grey had destined 
him for one of the first vacancies in England. 

Henceforth his residence at St. Paul's brought him still more 
continually into the world, which he delighted by his " wise 
wit." Most London dinners, he declared, evaporated in whis- 
pers to one's next neighbors. He never, however, spoke to his 
neighbor, but "fired" across the table. One day, however, he 
broke this rule, on hearing a lady, who sat next him, say in a 
sweet, low voice, " No gravy, sir." " Madam," he cried, " I 
have all my life been looking for a person who disliked gra- 
vy ; let us swear immortal friendship." She looked astonished, 
but took the oath, and kept it. " What better foundation for 
friendship," he asks, " than similarity of tastes ?" 

He gave an evening party once a week, when a profusion 
of wax-lights was his passion. He loved to see young people 
decked with natural flowers ; he was, in fact, a blameless and 
benevolent Epicurean in every thing; great indeed was the 
change from his former residence at Foston, which he used to 
say was twelve miles from a lemon. Charming as his parties 
at home must have been, they wanted the bonhommie and 
simplicity of former days, and of the homely suppers in Or- 
chard Street. Lord Dudley, Rogers, Moore, "Young Macau- 
lay," as he was called for many years, formed now his society. 
Lord Dudley was then in the state which afterward became in- 
sanity, and darkened completely a mind sad and peculiar from 
childhood. Bankes, in his " Journal," relates an anecdote of 
him about this time, wdien, as he says, " Dudley's mind was on 
the wane ; but still his caustic humor would find vent through 



A SHARP REPROOF. 465 

the cloud that was gradually overshadowing his masterly in- 
tellect." He was one day sitting in his room soliloquizing 
aloud ; his favorite Newfoundland dog was at his side, and 
seemed to engross all his attention. A gentleman was pres- 
ent Avho w T as good-looking and good-natured, but not over- 
burdened with sense. Lord Dudley at last, patting his dog's 
head, said, " Fido mio, they say dogs have no souls. Humph, 

and still they say " (naming the gentleman present) "has 

a soul !" One day Lord Dudley met Mr. Allen, Lord Hol- 
land's librarian, and asked him to dine with him. Allen went. 
When asked to describe his dinner, he said, "There was no 
one there. Lord Dudley talked a little to his servant, and a 
great deal to his dog, but said not one word to me." 

Innumerable are the witticisms related of Sydney Smith, 
when seated at a dinner-table, having swallowed in life what 
he called a " Caspian Sea" of soup. Talking one day of Sir 
Charles Lyell's book, the subject of which was the phenomena 
which the earth might, at some future period, present to the 
geologists — " Let us imagine," he said, " an excavation on the 
site of St. Paul's ; fancy a lecture by the Owen of his future era 
on the thigh-bone of a minor canon, or the tooth of a dean : 
the form, qualities, and tastes he would discover from them." 
" It is a great proof of shyness," he said, " to crumble your 
bread at dinner. Ah ! I see," he said, turning to a young lady, 
" you're afraid of me ; you crumble your bread. I do it when 
I sit by the Bishop of London, and with both hands when I sit 
by the Archbishop." 

He gave a capital reproof to a lively young M. P. who was 
accompanying him after dinner to one of the solemn evening 
receptions at Lambeth Palace during the life of the late 
Archbishop of Canterbury. The M. P. had been calling him 
"Smith," though they had never met before that day. As 
the carriage stopped at the Palace, Smith turned to him and 
said, " Now don't, my good fellow, don't call the Archbishop 
1 Howley.' " 

Talking of fancy balls — "Of course," he said, "if I went to 
one, I should go as a Dissenter." Of Macaulay he said, " To 
take him out of literature and science, and to put him in the 
House of Commons, is like taking the chief physician out of 
London in a pestilence." 

Nothing amused him so much as the want of perception of 
a joke. One hot day a Mrs. Jackson called on him, and spoke 
of the oppressive state of the weather. " Heat ! it was dread- 
ful," said Sydney ; " I found I could do nothing for it but take 
oif my flesh and sit in my bones." "Take off your flesh and 
sit in your bones ! Oh, Mr. Smith, how could vou do that ?" 

T7 2 



400 Sydney's classification op society. 

the lady cried. "Come and see next time, ma'am — nothing 
more easy." She went away, however, convinced that such a 
proceeding was very unorthodox. No wonder, with all his 
various acquirements, it should be said of him that no " dull 
dinners were ever remembered in his comjmny." 

A happy old age concluded his life, at once brilliant and use- 
ful. To the last he never considered his education as finished. 
His wit, a friend said, " was always fresh, always had the dew 
on it." He latterly got into what Lord Jeffrey called the vi- 
cious habit of water-drinking. Wine, he said, destroyed his 
understanding. He even "forgot the number of the Muses, 
and thought it was thirty-nine of course." He agreed with 
Sir James Mackintosh that he had found the world more good 
and more foolish than he had thought when young. He took 
a cheerful view of all things ; he thanked God for small as well 
as great things, even for tea. " I am glad," he used to say, 
"I was not born before tea." His domestic affections were 
strong, and were heartily reciprocated. 

General society he divided into classes : " The noodles — 
very numerous and well known. The affliction woman — a 
valuable member of society, generally an ancient spinster in 
small circumstances, who packs up her bag and sets off in 
cases of illness or death, ' to comfort, flatter, fetch, and carry.' 
The up-takers — people who see from their fingers' ends, and 
go through a room touching every thing. The clearers — who 
begin at a dish and go on tasting and eating till it is finished. 
The sheep-walkers — who go on forever on the beaten track. 
The lemon-squeezers of society — who act on you as a wet 
blanket ; see a cloud in sunshine ; the nails of the coffin in the 
ribbons of a bride ; extinguish all hope ; people whose very 
look sets your teeth on an edge. The let-well-aloners, cousin- 
german to the noodles — yet a variety, and who are afraid to 
act, and think it safer to stand still. Then the washerwomen 
— very numerous ! who always say, " Well, if ever I put on 
my best bonnet, 'tis sure to rain,' etc. 

" Besides this, there is a very large class of people always 
treading on your gouty foot, or talking in your deaf ear, or 
asking you to give them something with your lame hand," etc. 

During the autumn of the year 1844, Sydney Smith felt the 
death-stroke approaching. " I am so weak, both in body and 
mind," he said, "that I believe, if the knife were put into my 
hand, I should not have strength enough to stick it into a Dis- 
senter." In October he became seriously ill. "Ah ! Charles," 
he said to General Fox (when he was being kept very low), 
" I wish they would allow me even the wing of a roasted but- 
terflv." He dreaded sorrowful faces around him, but confided 



HIS DEATH. 467 

to his old servant, Annie Kay — and to her alone — his sense of 
his danger. 

Almost the last person Sydney Smith saw was his beloved 
brother Bobus, who followed him to the grave a fortnight after 
he had been laid in the tomb. 

He lingered till the 22d of February, 1845. His son closed 
his eyes. His last act was bestowing on a poverty-stricken 
clergyman a living. 

He was buried at Kensal Green, where his eldest son, Doug- 
las, had been interred. 

It has been justly and beautifully said of Sydney Smith, that 
Christianity was not a dogma with him, but a practical and 
most beneficent rule of life. 

As a clergyman, he was liberal, practical, stanch ; free from 
the latitudinarian principles of Hoadley, as from the bigotry 
of Laud. His wit was the wit of a virtuous, a decorous man ; 
it had pungency without venom ; humor without indelicacy j 
and was copious without being tiresome. 



GEORGE BUBB DODINGTON, LORD MELCOMBE. 

" It would have been well for Lord Melcorabe's memory," 
Horace Walpole remarks, " if his fame had been suffered to 
rest on the tradition of his wit and the evidence of his poetry." 
And, in the present day, that desirable result has come to pass. 
We remember Bubb Dodington chiefly as the courtier whose 
person, houses, and furniture were replete with costly ostenta- 
tion, so as to provoke the satire of Foote, who brought him 
on the stage under the name of Sir Thomas Lofty in " The 
Patron." 

We recall him most as " VAmphytrion chez qui on dine :" 
" My Lord of Melcombe," as Mallett says, 

"Whose soups and sauces duly season'd, 
Whose wit well timed and sense well reason'd, 
Give Burgundy a brighter stain, 
And add new flavor to Champagne." 

Who now cares much for the court intrigues which severed 
Sir Robert Walpole and Bubb Dodington ? Who noAV reads 
without disgust the annals of that famous quarrel between 
George II. and his son, during which each party devoutly 
wished the other dead? Who minds whether the time-serv- 
ing Bubb Dodington went over to Lord Bute or not ? Who 
cares whether his hopes of political preferment were or were 
not gratified? Bubb Dodington was, in fact, the dinner-giv- 
ing lordly poet, to whom even the saintly Young could write, 

"You give protection — I a worthless strain." 

Born in 1691, the accomplished courtier answered, till he 
had attained the age of twenty-nine, to the not very euphoni- 
ous name of Bubb. Then a benevolent uncle with a large es- 
tate died, and left him, with his lands, the more exalted sur- 
name of Dodington. He sprang, however, from an obscure 
family, who had settled in Dorchester ; but that disadvantage, 
which, according to Lord Brougham's famous pamphlet, acts 
so fatally on a young man's advancement in English public life, 
was obviated, as most things are, by a great fortune. 

Mr. Bubb had been educated at Oxford. At the age of 
twenty-four he was elected M. P. for Winchelsea ; he was soon 
afterward named Envoy at the Court of Spain, but returned 
home after his accession of wealth to provincial honors, and 



470 A MISFORTUNE FOR A MAN OF SOCIETY. 

became Lord-Lieutenant of Somerset. Nay, poets began to 
worship liim, and even to pronounce him to be well born : 

"Descended from old British sires; 
Great Dodington to kings allied ; 
My patron then, my laurels' pride." 

It would be consolatory to find that it is only Welsted who 
thus profaned the Muse by this abject flattery, were it not re- 
corded that Thomson dedicated to him his " Summer." The 
dedication was prompted by Lord Binning ; and " Summer" 
was published in 1727, when Dodington was one of the Lords 
of the Treasury, as well -as Clerk of the Pells in Ireland. It 
seemed, therefore, worth while for Thomson to pen such a pas- 
sage as this : " Your example, sir, has recommended poetry 
with the greatest grace to the example of those who are en- 
gaged in the most active scenes of life ; and this, though con- 
fessedly the least considerable of those qualities that dignify 
your character, must be particularly pleasing to one whose only 
hope of being introduced to your regard is thro' the recom- 
mendation of an art in which you are a master." Warton 
adding this tribute : 

"To praise a Dodington, rash bard, forbear! 
What can thy weak and ill-tuned voice avail, 
When on that theme both Young and Thomson fail?" 

Yet even when midway in his career, Dodington, in the famous 
political caricature called the "Motion," is depicted as "the 
Spaniel," sitting between the Duke of Argyle's legs, while his 
grace is driving a coach at full speed to the Treasury, with a 
sword instead of a whip in his hand, with Lord Chesterfield as 
postillion, and Lord Cobham as a footman, holding on by the 
straps ; even then the servile though pompous character of this 
true man of the world was comprehended completely ; and 
Bubb Dodington's characteristics never changed. 

In his political life, Dodington was so selfish, obsequious, and 
versatile as to incur universal opprobrium ; he had also another 
misfortune for a man of society — he became fat and lethargic. 
"My brother Ned," Horace Walpole remarks, "says he is 
grown of less consequence, thoiigh more weight." And on 
another occasion, speaking of a majority in the House of Lords, 
he adds, " I do not count Dodington, who must now always be 
in the minority, for no majority will accept him." 

While, however, during the factious reign of George II., the 
town was declared, even by Horace, to be " wondrous dull ; 
operas unfrequented, plays not in fashion, and amours old as 
marriages," Bubb Dodington, with his wealth and profusion, 
contrived always to be in vogue as a host, while he was at a 
discount as a politician. Politics and literature are the high- 



BRANDENBUEGH HOUSE. 471 

roads in England to that mnch-craved-for distinction, an admit- 
tance into the great world ; and Dodington united these pass- 
ports in his own person : he was a poetaster, and wrote polit- 
ical pamphlets. The latter were published and admired ; the 
poems were referred to as " very pretty love verses" by Lord 
Lyttelton, and were never published — and never ought to have 
been published, it is stated. 

His bon mots, his sallies, his fortune and places, and contin- 
ual dangling at court, procured Bubo, as Pope styled him, one 
pre-eminence. His dinners at Hammersmith were the most 
recherche in the metropolis. Every one remembers, or ought 
to remember, Brandenburgh House, when the hapless Caroline 
of Brunswick held her court there, and where her brave heart 
— burdened probably with many sins — broke at last. It had 
been the residence of the beautiful and famous Margravine of 
Anspach, whose loveliness in vain tempts us to believe her in- 
nocent, in despite of facts. Before those eras — the presence 
of the Margravine, whose infidelities were almost avowed, and 
the abiding of the queen, whose errors had, at all events, 
verged on the very confines of guilt — the house w r as owned by 
Dodington. There he gave dinners ; there he gratified a pas- 
sion for display which was puerile ; there he indulged in eccen- 
tricities which almost implied insanity ; there he concocted his 
schemes for court advancement ; and there, later in life, he con- 
tributed some of the treasures of his wit to dramatic literature. 
" The Wishes," a comedy, by Bentley, was supposed to owe 
much of its point to the brilliant wit of Dodington.* 

At Brandenburgh House, a nobler presence than that of Dod- 
ington still haunted the groves and alleys, for Prince Rupert 
had once owned it. When Dodington bought it, he gave it — 
in jest, we must presume — the name of La Trappe; and it was 
not called Brandenburgh House until the fair and frail Mar- 
gravine came to live there. 

Its gardens were long famous, and in the time of Doding- 
ton were the scene of revel. Thomas Bentley, the son of Rich- 
ard Bentley, the celebrated critic, had .written a play called 
"The Wishes," and during the summer of 1761 it was acted 
at Drury Lane, and met with the especial approbation of 
George III., who sent the author, through Lord Bute, a pres- 
ent of two hundred guineas as a tribute to the good sentiments 
of the production. 

This piece, which, in spite of its moral tendency, has died 
out, while plays of less virtuous character have lived, was re- 
hearsed in the gardens of Brandenburgh House. Bubb Dod- 
ington associated much with those who give fame ; but he 
* See Walpole's "Royal and Noble Authors." 



472 Johnson's opinion op poote. 

courted among them also those who could revenge affronts by 
bitter ridicule. Among the actors and literati who were then 
sometimes at Brandenburgh House were Foote and Churchill ; 
capital boon companions, but, as it proved, dangerous foes. 

Endowed with imagination ; with a mind enriched by clas- 
sical and historical studies ; possessed of a brilliant wit, Bubb 
Dodington was, nevertheless, in the sight of some men, ridicu- 
lous. While the rehearsals of " The Wishes" went on, Foote 
was noting down all the peculiarities of the Lord of Branden- 
burgh House, with a view to bring them to account in his play 
of " The Patron." Lord Melcombe was an aristocratic Dom- 
bey : stultified by his own self-complacency, he dared to exhib- 
it his peculiarities before the English Aristophanes. It was an 
act of imprudence, for Foote had long before (in 1747) opened 
the little theatre of the Haymarket with a sort of monologue 
play, " The Diversions of the Morning," hi which he convulsed 
his audience with the perfection of a mimicry never beheld be- 
fore, and so wonderful, that even the persons of his models 
seemed to stand before the amazed spectators. 

These entertainments, in which the contriver was at once 
the author and performer, have been admirably revived by 
Mathews and others, and in another line by the lamented Al- 
bert Smith. The Westmiuster justices, furious and alarmed, 
opposed the daring performance, on which Foote changed the 
name of his piece, and called it " Mr. Foote giving Tea to his 
Friends," "himself still the sole actor, and changing with Pro- 
teus-like celerity from one to the other. Then came his 
"Auction of Pictures," and Sir Thomas de Veil, one of his ene- 
mies, the justices, was introduced. Orator Henley and Cock 
the auctioneer figured also ; and year after year the town was 
enchanted by that which is most gratifying to a polite audience, 
the finished exhibition of faults and follies. One stern voice 
was raised in reprobation, that of Samuel Johnson ; he, at all 
events, had a due horror of buffoons ; but even he owned him- 
self vanquished. 

" The first time I was in Foote's company was at Fitzher- 
bert's. Having no good opinion of the fellow, I was resolved 
not to be pleased ; and it is very difficult to please a man against 
his will. I went on eating my dinner pretty sullenly, affecting 
not to mind him ; but the dog was so very comical that I was 
obliged to lay down my knife and fork, throw myself back in 
my chair, and fairly laugh it out. Sir, he was irresistible." 
Consoled by Foote's misfortunes and ultimate complicated 
misery for his lessened importance, Bubb Dodington still 
reigned, however, in the hearts of some learned votaries. 
Richard Bentley, the critic, qpmpared him to Lord Halifax — 



CHURCHILL AND "THE ROSCIAT). 1 ' 473 

"That Halifax, my lord, as you do yet, 
Stood forth the friend of poetry and wit, 
Sought silent merit in the secret cell, 
And Heav'n, nay, even man, repaid him well." 

A more remorseless foe, however, than Foote, appeared in 
the person of Charles Churchill, the wild and unclerical son of 
a poor curate of Westminster. Foote laughed Buhb Doding- 
ton clown, but Churchill perpetuated the satire ; for Churchill 
was wholly unscrupulous, and his faults had been reckless and 
desperate. Wholly unfit for a clergyman, he had taken orders, 
obtained a curacy in Wales at £30 a year ; not being able to 
subsist, took to keeping a cider-cellar, became a sort of bank- 
rupt, and, quitting Wales, succeeded to the curacy of his fa- 
ther, who had just died. Still, famine haunted his home ; 
Churchill took, therefore, to teaching young ladies to read and 
write, and conducted himself in the boarding-school, where his 
duties lay, with wonderful propriety. He had married at seven- 
teen ; but even that step had not protected his morals : he fell 
into abject poverty. Lloyd, father of his friend Robert Lloyd, 
then second master at Westminster, made an arrangement with 
his creditors. Young Lloyd had published a poem called 
"The Actor;" Churchill, in imitation, now produced "The 
Rosciad," and Bubb Dodington was one whose ridiculous 
points were salient in those days of personality. "The Ros- 
ciad" had a signal success, which completed the ruin of its au- 
thor : he became a man of the town, forsook the wife- of his 
youth, and abandoned the clerical character. There are few 
sights more contemptible than that of a clergyman who has 
cast off his profession, or whose profession has cast him off. 
But Churchill's talents for a time kept him from utter destitu- 
tion. Bubb Dodington may have been consoled by finding 
that he shared the fate of Dr. Johnson, who had spoken slight- 
ingly of Churchill's works, and who shone forth, therefore, in 
" The Ghost," a later poem, as Dr. Pomposo. 

Richard Cumberland, the dramatist, drew a portrait of Lord 
Melcombe, which is said to have been taken from the life ; but 
perhaps the most faithful delineation of Bubb Dodington's 
character was furnished by himself in his "Diary;" in which, 
as it has been well observed, he " unveiled the nakedness of 
his mind, and displayed himself as a courtly compound of mean 
compliance and political prostitution." It may, in passing, be 
remarked, that few men figure well in an autobiography ; and 
that Cumberland himself, proclaimed by Dr. Johnson to be a 
" learned, ingenious, accomplished gentleman," adding, the 
" want of company is an inconvenience, but Mr. Cumberland is 
a million" — in spite of this eulogium, Cumberland has betrayed 



474 PERSONAL RIDICULE IN ITS PROPER LIGHT- 

in his own autobiography unbounded vanity, worldliness, and 
an undue estimation of his own perishable fame. After all, 
amusing as personalities must always be, neither the humors 
of Foote, the vigorous satire of Churchill, nor the careful limn- 
ing of Cumberland, while they can not be ranked among tal- 
ents of the highest order, imply a sort of social treachery. The 
delicious little colloquy between Boswell and Johnson places 
low personal ridicule in its proper light. 

Boswell. — " Foote has a great deal of humor." Johnson. 
— " Yes, sir." Boswell. — " He has a singular talent of exhibit- 
ing characters." Johnson. — " Sir, it is not a talent — it is a 
vice ; it is what others abstain from. It is not comedy, which 
exhibits the character of a species — as that of a miser gather- 
ed from many misers — it is farce which exhibits individuals." 
Boswell. — " Did he not think of exhibiting you, sir ?" John- 
son. — " Sir, fear restrained him ; he knew I would have broken 
his bones. I would have saved him the trouble of cutting off 
a leg ; I would not have left him a leg to cut off." 

Few annals exist of the private life of Bubb Dodington, but 
those few are discreditable. 

Like most men of his time, and like many men of all times, 
Dodington was entangled by an unhappy and perplexing in- 
trigue. 

There was a certain "black woman," as Horace Walpole 
calls a Mrs. Strawbridge, whom Bubb Dodington admired. 
This handsome brunette lived in a corner house of Saville 
Row, in Piccadilly, where Dodington visited her. The result 
of their intimacy was his giving this lady a bond of ten thou- 
sand pounds to be paid if he married any one else. The real 
object of his affections was a Mrs. Behan, with whom he lived 
seventeen years, and whom, on the death of Mrs. Strawbridge, 
he eventually married. 

Among Bubb Dodington's admirers and disciples was Paul 
Whitehead, a wild specimen of the poet, rake, satirist, drama- 
tist, all in one ; and, what was quite in character, a Templar to 
boot. Paul — so named from being born on that saint's day — 
wrote one or two pieces which brought him an ephemeral 
fame, such as the " State Dunces," and the " Epistle to Dr. 
Thompson," "Manners," a satire, and the "Gymnasiad," a 
mock heroic poem, intended to ridicule the passion for boxing 
then prevalent. Paul Whitehead, who died in 1774, was an 
infamous, but not, in the opinion of Walpole, a desj^icable poet, 
yet Churchill has consigned him to everlasting infamy as a 
reprobate in these lines : 

"May I (can worse disgrace on manhood fall?) 
Be born a Whitehead, and baptized a Paul." 



WALPOLE ON DODINGTON'S " DIARY." 475 

Paul was not, however, worse than his satirist Churchill ; 
and both of these wretched men were members of a society- 
long the theme of horror and disgust, even after its existence 
had ceased to be remembered, except by a few old people. 
This was the " Hell-fire Club," held in appropriate orgies at 
Medmenham Abbey, Buckinghamshire. The profligate Sir 
Francis Dashwood, Wilkes, and Churchill were among its 
most prominent members. 

With such associates, and living in a court where nothing 
but the basest passions reigned and the lowest arts prevailed, 
we are inclined to accord with the descendant of Bubb Dod- 
ington, the editor of his " Diary," Henry Penruddocke Wynd- 
ham, who declares that all Lord Melcombe's political conduct 
was " wholly directed by the base motives of vanity, selfish- 
ness, and avarice." Lord Melcombe seems to have been a 
man of the world of the very worst calibre / sensual, servile, 
and treacherous ; ready, during the lifetime of his patron, 
Frederick, Prince of Wales, to go any lengths against the ad- 
verse party of the Pelhams, that prince's political foes — eager, 
after the death of Frederick, to court those powerful men with 
fawning servility. 

The famous " Diary" of Bubb Dodington supplies the infor- 
mation from which these conclusions have been drawn. Hor- 
ace Walpole, who knew Dodington well, describes how he read 
with avidity the "Diary" which was published in 1784. 

" A nephew of Lord Melcombe's heirs has published that 
lord's 'Diary.' Indeed, it commences in 1749, and I grieve 
it was not dated twenty years later. However, it deals in top- 
ics that are twenty times more familiar and fresh to my mem- 
ory than any passage that has happened within these six 
months. I wish I could convey it to you. Though drawn by 
his own hand, and certainly meant to flatter himself, it is a 
truer portrait than any of his hirelings would have given. 
Never was such a composition of vanity, versatility, and ser- 
vility. In short, there is but one feature wanting in it, his 
wit, of which in the whole book there are not three sallies." 

The editor of this " Diary" remarks "that he will no doubt 
be considered a very extraordinary editor, the practice of whom 
has generally been to prefer flattery to truth, and partiality to 
justice." To understand, not the flattery which his contem- 
poraries heaped upon Bubb Dodington, but the opprobrium 
with which they loaded his memory — to comprehend, not his 
merits, but his demerits — it is necessary to take a brief survey 
of his political life from the commencement. He began life, 
as we have seen, as a servile adherent of Sir Robert Walpole. 
A political epistle to the minister was the prelude to a tempo- 



476 THE BEST COMMENTARY ON A MAN'S LIFE. 

rary alliance only, for in 173*7 Bubb went over to the adverse 
party of Leicester House, and espoused the cause of Frederick, 
Prince of Wales, against his royal father. He was therefore 
dismissed from the Treasury. When Sir Robert fell, Bubb ex- 
pected to rise, but his expectations of preferment were not real- 
ized. He attacked the new administration forthwith, and suc- 
ceeded so far in becoming important that he was made Treas- 
urer of the Navy, a post which he resigned in 1749, and which 
he held again in 1755, but which he lost the next year. On 
the accession of George III., he was not ashamed to appear al- 
together in a new character, as the friend of Lord Bute : he 
was, therefore, advanced to the peerage by the title of Baron 
of Melcombe Regis, in 1761. The honor was enjoyed for one 
short year only, and on the 28th of July, 1762, Bubb Doding- 
ton expired. Horace Walpole, in his Royal and Noble Au- 
thors, complains that " Dodington's ' Diary' was mangled, in 
compliment, before it was imparted to the public." We can 
not, therefore, judge of what the •' Diary" was before, as the 
editor avows every anecdote was cut out, and all the little gos- 
sip so illustrative of character and manners which would have 
brightened its dull pages, fell beneath the power of a merciless 
pair of scissors. Mr. Penruddocke Wyndham conceives, how- 
ever, that he was only doing justice to society in these sup- 
pressions. "It would," he says, "be no entertainment to the 
reader to be informed who daily dined with his lordship, or 
whom he daily met at the table of other people." 

Posterity thinks differently : a knowledge of a man's asso- 
ciates forms the best commentary on his life ; and there is 
much reason to rejoice that all biographers are not like Mr. 
Penruddocke Wyndham. Bubb Dodington, more especially, 
w T as a man of society : inferior as a literary man, contemptible 
as a politician, it was only at the head of his table that he was 
agreeable and brilliant. He was, in fact, a man who had no 
domestic life: a courtier, like Lord Hervey, but without Lord 
Hervey's consistency. He was, in truth, a type of that era in 
England : vulgar in aims ; dissolute in conduct ; ostentatious, 
vain-glorious — of a low, ephemeral ambition, but, at the same 
time, talented, acute, and lavish to the lettered. The public is 
now the patron of the gifted. What writer cares for individ- 
ual opinion, except as it tends to sweep up the gross amount 
of public blame or censure ? What publisher will consent to 
undertake a work because some lord or lady recommended it 
to his notice ? The reviewer is greater in the commonwealth 
of letters than the man of rank. 

But in these days it was otherwise ; and they who, in the 
necessities of the times, did what they could to advance the in- 
terests of the belles lettres, deserve not to be forgotten. 



LEICESTER HOUSE. 477 

It is with a feeling of sickness that we open the pages of 
this great wit's "Diary," and attempt to peruse the sentences 
in which the most grasping selfishness is displayed. We fol- 
low him to Leicester House, that ancient tenement — (where- 
fore pulled down, except to erect on its former site the narrow- 
est of streets, does not appear) : that former home of the Syd- 
neys had not always been polluted by the dissolute, heartless 
clique who composed the court of Frederick, Prince of Wales. 
Its chambers had once been traversed by Henry Sydney, by 
Algernon, his brother. It was their home — their father, Rob- 
ert Sydney, Earl of Leicester, having lived there. The lovely 
Dorothy Sydney, Waller's Saccharissa, once, in all purity and 
grace, had danced in that gallery where the vulgar, brazen 
Lady Middlesex and her compliant lord afterward flattered the 
Aveakest of princes, Frederick. In old times, Leicester House 
had stood on Lammas land — laud, in the spirit of the old char- 
ities, open to the poor at Lammas-tide ; and even " the Right 
Hon. the Earl of Leicester"— as an old document hath it — was 
obliged, if he chose to turn out his cows or horses on that ap- 
propriated land, to pay a rent for it to the overseers of St. 
Martin's parish, then really " in the fields." And here this no- 
bleman not only dwelt in all state himself but let or lent his 
house to persons whose memory seems to hallow even Leices- 
ter Fields. Elizabeth of Bohemia, after what was to her in- 
deed " life's fitful fever," died at Leicester House. It became 
then, temporarily, the abode of embassadors. Colbert, in the 
time of Charles II., occupied the place ; Prince Eugene, in 1712, 
held his residence here ; and the rough soldier, famous for all 
absence of tact — brave, loyal-hearted, and coarse — lingered at 
Leicester House in hopes of obstructing the peace between En- 
gland and France. 

All that was good and great fled forever from Leicester 
House at the instant that George II., when Prince of Wales, 
was driven by his royal father from St. James's, and took up 
his abode in it until the death of George I. The once honored 
home of the Sydneys henceforth becomes loathsome in a moral 
sense. Here William, Duke of Cumberland — the hero, as court 
flatterers called him ; the butcher, as the poor Jacobites desig- 
nated him of Culloden — first saw the light. Peace and re- 
spectability then departed the old house forever. Prince Fred- 
erick was its next inmate : here the Princess of Wales, the 
mother of George III., had her lyings-in, and her royal husband 
held his public tables ; and at these and in every assembly, as 
well as in private, one figure is conspicuous. 

Grace Boyle — for she unworthily bore that great name — 
was the daughter and heiress of Richard, Viscount Shannon. 



478 ELEGANT MODES OF PASSING TIME. 

She married Lord Middlesex, bringing him a fortune of thirty 
thousand pounds. Short, plain, " very yellow," as her contem- 
poraries affirm, with a head full of Greek and Latin, and de- 
voted to music and painting ; it seems strange that Frederick 
should have been attracted to one far inferior to his own prin- 
cess both in mind and person. But so it was, for in those days 
every man liked his neighbor's wife better than his own. Imi- 
tating the forbearance of her royal mother-in-law, the princess 
tolerated such of her husband's mistresses as did not interfere 
in politics : Lady Middlesex was the " my good Mrs. Howard" 
of Leicester House. She was made Mistress of the Robes : 
her favor soon " grew," as the shrewd Horace remarks, " to be 
rather more than Platonic." She lived with the royal pair 
constantly, and sat up till five o'clock in the morning at their 
suppers ; and Lord Middlesex saw and submitted to all that 
was going on with the loyalty and patience of a Georgian 
courtier. Lady Middlesex was a docile politician, and, on that 
account, retained her position probably long after she had lost 
her influence. 

Her name appears constantly in the " Diary," out of which 
every thing amusing has been carefully expunged. 

" Lady Middlesex, Lord Bathurst, Mr. Breton, and I, waited 
on their Royal Highnesses to Spitalfields, to see the manufac- 
ture of silk." In the afteraoon off went the same party to 
Norwood Forest, in private coaches, to see a " settlement of 
gipsies." Then returning, went to find out Bettesworth, the 
conjuror, but, not discovering him, went in search of the " lit- 
tle Dutchman." Were disappointed in that, but " concluded," 
relates Bubb Dodington, " the particularities of this day by 
supping with Mrs. Cannon, the princess's midwife." 

All these elegant modes of passing the time were not only 
for the sake of Lady Middlesex, but, it was said, of her friend, 
Miss Granville, one of the maids of honor, daughter of the first 
Lord Lansdown, the poet. This young lady, Eliza Granville, 
was scarcely pretty : a fair, red-haired girl. 

All this thoughtless, if not culpable gallantry, was abruptly 
checked by the rude hand of death. During the month of 
March, Frederick was attacked with illness, having caught 
cold. Very little apprehension was expressed at first, but, 
about eleven days after his first attack, he expired. Half an 
hour before his death he had asked to see some friends, and 
had called for coffee and bread and butter : a fit of coughing 
came on, and he died instantly from suffocation. An abscess, 
which had been forming in his side, had burst ; nevertheless, 
his two physicians, Wilmot and Lee, " knew nothing of his dis- 
temper." According to Lord Melcombe, who thus refers to 



A SAD DAY. 479 

their blunders, " They declared, half an hour before his death, 
that his pulse was like a man's in perfect health. They either 
would not see or did not know the consequences of the black 
thrush, which appeared in his mouth, and quite down into his 
throat. Their ignorance, or their knowledge of his disorder, 
renders them equally inexcusable for not calling in other assist- 
ance." 

The consternation in the prince's household was great, not 
for his life, but for the confusion into which politics were 
thrown by his death. After his relapse, and until just before 
his death, the princess never suffered any English man or wom- 
an above the degree of valet-de-chambre to see him ; nor 
did she herself see any one of her household until absolutely 
necessary. After the death of his eldest born, George II. vent- 
ed his diabolical jealousy upon the cold remains of one thus, 
cut oft* in the prime of life. The funeral was ordered to be on 
the model of that of Charles II., but private counter-orders 
were issued to reduce the ceremonial to the smallest degree of 
respect that could be paid. 

On the 13th of April, 1751, the body of the prince was en- 
tombed in Henry VIL's chapel. Except the lords appointed 
to hold the pall and attend the chief mourner, when the at- 
tendants were called over in their ranks, there was not a sin- 
gle English lord, not one bishop, and only one Irish lord (Lord 
Limerick), and three sons of peers. Sir John Rushout and 
Dodington were the only privy councilors who followed. It 
rained heavily, but no covering was provided for the proces- 
sion. The service was performed without organ or anthem. 
"Thus," observes Bubb Dodington, "ended this sad day." 

Although the prince left a brother and sisters, the Duke of 
Somerset acted as chief mourner. The king hailed the event 
of the prince's death as a relief, which was to render happy 
his remaining days ; and Bubb Dodington hastened, in a few 
months, to offer to the Pelhams " his friendship and attach- 
ment." His attendance at court was resumed, although 
George II. could not endure him ; and the old Walpolians, 
nicknamed the Black-tan, were also averse to him. 

Such were Bubb Dodington's actions. His expressions, on 
occasion of the prince's death, were in a very different tone. 

" We have lost," he wrote to Sir Horace Mann, " the delight 
and ornament of the age he lived in — the expectations of the 
public : in this light I have lost more than any subject in En- 
gland ; but this is light ; public advantages confined to myself 
do not, ought not, to weigh with me. But we have lost the 
refuge of private distress — the balm of the afflicted heart — the 
shelter of the miserable against the fury of private adversity ; 



480 "what does dodington come here foe?" 

the arts, the graces, the anguish, the misfortunes of society, 
have lost their patron and their remedy. 

" I have lost my companion — my protector — the friend that 
loved me, that condescended to hear, to communicate, to share 
in all the pleasures and pains of the human heart : where the 
social affections and emotions of the mind only presided, with- 
out regard to the infinite disproportion of my rank and condi- 
tion. This is a wound that can not, ought not to heal. If I 
pretended to fortitude here, I should he infamous — a monster 
of ingratitude — and unworthy of all consolation, if I was not 
inconsolable." 

" Thank you," writes the shrewd Horace Walpole, address- 
ing Sir Horace Mann, " for the transcript from Buhb de Tris- 
tlbus. I will keep your secret, though I am persuaded that a 
man who has composed such a funeral oration on his master 
had himself fully intended that its flowers should not bloom 
and wither in obscurity." 

Well might George II., seeing him go to court, say: "I see 
Dodington here sometimes ; what does he come for ?" 

It was, however, clearly seen what he went for, when, in 1 753, 
two years after the death of his "benefactor," Dodington hum- 
bly offered His Majesty his services in the house, and " five mem- 
bers," for the rest of his life, if His Majesty would give Mr. 
Pelham leave to employ him for His Majesty's service. Never- 
theless, he continued to advise with the Princess of Wales, and 
to drop into her house as if it had been a sister's house — sitting 
on a stool near the fireside, and listening to her accounts of her 
children. 

In the midst of these intrigues for favor on the part of Dod- 
ington, Mr. Pelham died, and was succeeded by his brother, the 
Duke of Newcastle, the issue of whose administration is well 
known. 

In 1760 death again befriended the now veteran wit, beau, 
and politician. George II. died ; and the intimacy which Dod- 
ington had always taken care to preserve between himself and 
the Princess of Wales ended advantageously for him ; and he 
instantly, in spite of all his former professions to Pelham, join- 
ed hand and heart with that minister, from whom he obtained 
a peerage. This, as we have seen, was not long enjoyed. Lord 
Melcombe, as this able, intriguing man was now styled, died 
on the 28th of July, 1762, and with him tenninated the short- 
lived distinction for which he had sacrificed even a decent pre- 
text of principle and consistency. 

So general has been the contempt felt for his character, that 
it seems almost needless to assert that Bubb Dodington was 
eminently to be despised. Nothing much more severe can be 



l'KKM) US FROM OUB EXECUTORS AND EDITORS. 481 

said of him than the remarks of Horace Walpole upon his 
" Diary," in which he observes that Dodington records little 
but what is to his own disgrace ; as if he thought that the 
world would forgive his inconsistencies as readily as he forgave 
himself. "Had he adopted," Horace well observes, "the 
French title ' Confessions? it would have seemed to imply 
some kind of penitence." 

But vain-glory engrossed him : " he was determined to raise 
an altar to himself, and, for want of burnt-offerings, lighted the 
pyre, like a great author (Rousseau), with his own character." 

It was said by the same acute observer, both of Lord Her- 
vey and of Bubb Dodington, that " they were the only two per- 
sons he ever knew that were always aiming at wit and never 
finding it." And here, it seems, most that can be testified in 
praise of a heartless, clever man, must be summed up. 

Lord Melcombe's property, with the exception of a few leg- 
acies, devolved upon his cousin, Thomas Wyndham, of Ham- 
mersmith, by whom his lordship's papers, letters, and poems 
were bequeathed to Henry Penruddocke Wyndham, with an 
injunction that only such as "might do honor to his memory 
should be made public." 

After this, in addition to the true saying, defend us from our 
friends, one may exclaim, " defend us from our executors and 
editors." 

X 



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•' They do honor to American Literature, and would do 
honor to the Literature of any Country in the World." 

THE RISE OF 
THE DUTCH REPUBLIC. 

% fjistorn. 
By JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY. 

New Edition. With a Portrait of William of Orange. 3 vols. 

8vo, Muslin, $G 00 ; Sheep, $6 75 ; Half Calf antique, $9 00 ; 

Half Calf, extra gilt, $10 50. 

We regard this work as the best contribution to modern history that has yet 
been made by an American.— Methodist Quarterly Review. 

The "History of the Dutch Republic" is a great gift to us; but the heart and 
earnestness that beat through all its pages are greater, for they give us most 
timely inspiration to vindicate the true ideas of our country, and to compose an 
able history of our own. — Christian Examiner (Boston). 

This work bears on its face the evidences of scholarship and research. The 
arrangement is clear and effective ; the style energetic, lively, and often brilliant. 
* * * Mr. Motley's instructive volumes will, we trust, have a circulation commen- 
surate with their interest and value.— Protestant Episcopal Quarterly Review. 

To the illustration of this most interesting period Mr. Motley has brought the 
matured powers of a vigorous and brilliant mind, and the abundant fruits of pa- 
tient and judicious study and deep reflection. The result is, one of the most 
important contributions to historical literature that have been made in this coun- 
try. — North American Review. 

We would conclude this notice by earnestly recommending our readers to pro- 
cure for themselves this truly great and admirable work, by the production of 
which the auther has conferred no less honor upou his country than he has won 
praise and fame for himself, and than which, we can assure them, they can find 
nothing more attractive or interesting within the compass of modern iiterature. 
— Evangelical Review. 

It is not often that we have the pleasure of commending to the attention of the 
lover of books a work of such extraordinary aud unexceptionable excellence as 
this one. — Universalist Quarterly Review. 

There are an elevation and a classic polish in these volumes, and a felicity of 
grouping and of portraiture, which invest the subject with the attractions of a 
living and stirring episode in the grand historic drama. — Southern Methodist 
Quarterly Review. 

The author writes with a genial glow and love of his subject. — Presbyterian 
Quarterly Review. 

Mr. Motley is a sturdy Republican and a hearty Protestant. His style is live- 
ly and picturesque, and his work is an honor and an important accession to our 
national literature. — Church Review. 

Mr. Motley's work is an important one, the result of profound research, sincere 
convictions, sound principles, and manly sentiments; and even those who are 
most familiar with the history of the period will find in it a fresh and vivid ad- 
dition to their previous knowledge. It does honor to American literature, and 
would do honor to the literature of any country in the world. — Edinburgh Re- 
view. 

A serious chasm in English historical literature has been (by this book) very 
remarkably filled. * * * A history as complete as industry and genius can make 
it now lies before us, of the first twenty years of the revolt of the United Prov- 
inces. * * * All the essentials of a great writer Mr. Motley eminently possesses. 
His mind is broad, his industry unwearied. In power of dramatic description 
no modern historian, except, perhaps, Mr. Carlyle, surpasses him, and in analy- 
sis of character he is elaborate and distinct. — Westminster Review. 



2 MOTLEY'S RI=*E OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC. 

It is a work of real historical value, the result of accurate criticism, written 
in a liberal spirit, and from first to last deeply interesting. — Athenceum. 

The style is excellent, clear, vivid, eloquent ; and the industry with which 
original sources have been investigated, and through which new light has been 
shed over perplexed incidents and characters, entitles Mr. Motley to a high rank 
in the literature of an age peculiarly rich in history. — North British Review. 

It abounds in new information, and, as a first work, commands a very cordial 
recognition, not merely of the promise it gives, but of the extent and importance 
of the labor actually performed on it London Examiner. 

Mr. Motley's "History" is a work of which any country might be proud. — 
Press (London). 

Mr. Motley's History will be a standard book of reference in historical litera- 
ture. — London Literary Gazette. 

Mr. Motley has searched the whole range of historical documents necessary to 
the composition of his work. — London Leader. 

This is really a great work. It belongs to the class of books in which we 
range our Grotes, Milmans, Merivales, and Macaulays, as the glories of English 
literature in the department of history. * * * Mr. Motley's gifts as a historical 
writer are among the highest and rarest. — Nonconformist (London). 

Mr. Motley's volumes will well repay perusal. * * * For his learning, his libera! 
tone, and his generous enthusiasm, we heartily commend him, and bid him good 
speed for the remainer of his interesting and heroic narrative. — Saturday Review. 

The story is a noble one, and is worthily treated. * * * Mr. Motley has had th^ 
patience to unravel, with unfailing perseverance, the thousand intricate plots of 
the adversaries of the Prince of Orange; but the details and the literal extract* 
which he has derived from original documents, and transferred to his pages, 
give a truthful color and a picturesque effect, which are especially charming. — 
London Daily News. 

M. Lothrop Motley dans son magnifique tableau de la formation de notre Re- 
publique. — G. Geoen Van Fbinsteree. 

Our accomplished countryman, Mr. J. Lothrop Motley, who, during the last 
five years, for the better prosecution of his labors, has established his residence 
in the neighborhood of the scenes of his narrative. No one acquainted with the 
Sne powers of mind possessed by this scholar, and the earnestness with which he 
has devoted himself to the task, can doubt that he will do full justice to his im- 
portant but difficult subject. — W. H. Pkescoit. 

The production of such a work as this astonishes, while it gratifies the pride 
of the American reader. — N. Y. Observer. 

The "Rise of the Dutch Republic" at once, and by acclamation, takes its 
place by the " Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," as a work which, wheth- 
er for research, substance, or style, will never be superseded. — N. Y. Albion. 

A work upon which all who read the English language may congratulate 
themselves. — New Yorker Handels Zeitung. 

Mr. Motley's place is now (alluding to this book) with Hallam and Lord Ma- 
hon, Alison and Macaulay in the Old Country, and with Washington Irving, 
Prescott, and Bancroft in this. —N. Y. Times. 

The authority, in the English tongue, for the history of the period and people 
to which it refers. — N. Y. Courier and Enquirer. 

This work at once places the author on the list of American historians which 
has been so signally illustrated by the names of Irving, Prescott, Bancroft, and 
Hildreth. — Boston Times. 

The work is a noble one, and a most desirable acquisition to our historical lit- 
erature. — Mobile Advertiser. 

Such a work is an honor to its author, to his country, and to the age in which 
it was written. — Ohio Farmer. 

Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, 

Franklin Square, New York. 



Harmsb & Beothebs will send the above Work by Mail (postage paid (for any 
distance in the UnitPd Stntes under 8000 miles), on receipt of the Money. 



CURTIS'S HISTORY 

OF THE 

CONSTITUTION. 



HISTORY OF THE ORIGIN, FORMATION, AND ADOP- 
TION OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED 
STATES. By George Ticknor Curtis. Complete in 2 vols. 
8vo, Muslin, $4 00 ; Law Sheep, f 5 00 ; Half Calf, $6 00. 

A book so thorough as this in the comprehension of its subject, so impartial 
in the summing up of its judgments, so well considered in its method, and so 
truthful in its matter, may safely challenge the most exhaustive criticism. The 
Constitutional History of our country has not before been made the subject of a 
special treatise. We may congratulate ourselves that an author has been found 
so capable to do full justice to it ; for that the work will take its rank among the 
received text-books of our political literature will be questioned by no one who 
has given it a careful perusal. — National Intelligencer. 

We know of no person who is better qualified (now that the late Daniel 'Web- 
ster is no more), to undertake this important history. — Boston Journal. 

It will take its place among the classics of American literature. — Boston Cour- 
ier. 

The author has given years to the preliminary studies, and nothing has es- 
caped him in the patient and conscientious researches to which he has devoted 
so ample a portion of time. Indeed, the work has been so thoroughly performed 
that it will never need to be done over again ; for the sources have been exhaust- 
ed, and the materials put together with so much judgment and artistic skill that 
taste and the sense of completeness are entirely satisfied. — N. Y. Daily Times. 

A most important and valuable contribution to the historical and political lit- 
erature of the United States. All publicists and students of public law will be 
grateful to Mr. Curtis for the diligence and assiduity with which he has wrought 
out the great mine of diplomatic lore in which the foundations of the American 
Constitution are laid, and for the light he has thrown on his wide and arduous 
subject. — London Morning Chronicle. 

To trace the history of the formation of the Constitution, and explain the cir- 
cumstances of the time and country out of which its various provisions grew, is a 
task worthy of the highest talent. To have performed that task in a satisfacto- 
ry manner is an achievement with which an honorable ambition may well be 
gratified. We can honestly say that in our opinion Mr. Curtis has fairly won 
this distinction. — N. Y. Courier and Enquirer. 

We have seen no history which surpasses it in the essential qualities of a 
standard work destined to hold a permanent place in the impartial judgment of 
future generations. — Boston Traveler. 

Should the second volume sustain the character of the first, we hazard nothing 
in claiming for the entire publication the character of a standard work. It will 
furnish the only sure guide to the interpretation of the Constitution, by unfolding 
historically the wants it was intended to supply, and the evils which it was in- 
tended to remedy. — Boston Daily Advertiser. 

This volume is an important contribution to our constitutional and historical 
literature. * * * Every true friend of the Constitution will gladly welcome it. 
The author has presented a narrative clear and interesting. It evinces careful 
research, skillful handling of material, lucid statement, and a desire to write in 
a tone and manner worthy of the great theme. — Boston Post. 

Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, 

Franklin Square, New York. 



*,* Habpee & Bbotheeb will send the above Work by Mail, postage paid (for 
Any distance in thp 1'nitert St:itrs under 300ft miles), on receipt of the Money. 



"A Grand Book— an Honor to America." 



THE 

PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY 

OF 

THE SEA. 

By Lieut. M. E. MAURY, U. S. N. 

With Wood-cuts and Charts. New Edition. Enlarged and Im- 
proved. Svo, Muslin, 



Notices of the Pi-ess. 

Lieutenant Maury, in his fascinating book — Blackwood's Magazine. 

We err greatly if Lieut. Maury's book will not hereafter be classed with the 
works of the great men who have taken the lead in extending and improving 
knowledge and art; his book displays, in a remarkable degree, like the "ad- 
vancement of learning" and the natural history of Buffon, profound research 
and magnificent imagination. — London Illustrated News. 

We have not met for a long period with a book which is at once so minute 
and profound in research, and so plain, manly, and eloquent in expression. * * * 
At almost every page there are proofs that Lieut. Maury is as pious as he is 
learned. * * * This is but one passage of a book which will make a sensation not 
like that or equal to that made by " Uncle Tom's Cabin," but a durable and ex- 
panding impression in the general mind, and hereafter Lieut. Maury will be re- 
membered among the great scientific men of the age, and the benefactors of 
mankind. — London Economist. 

We have scarcely ever met with a work that has given us more instruction 
and pleasure. Under the author's clear and familiar treatment, the Ocean no 
longer seems a mere mass of waters, unvaried except by storms and tides; it 
becomes a living thing, as it were, an immense vital organ, composed of a won- 
derful congeries of powers, and performing a wonderful part in the natural econ- 
omy of our terraqueous globe. Its currents and drifts, the temperature of its 
different parts, the depths of its several basins, its contents, the mountains, table 
lauds, and profound valleys that occupy its bottom, its action on the atmosphere 
and the counteraction, its processes of evaporization, the courses of winds bear- 
ing its vapors to the regions where they are precipitated in rain or snow, the 
great maritime routes across its expanse, and how they are determined by oce- 
anic and atmospherical phenomena — all are set forth in a plain, vivid, and very 
impressive manner. — Universalist Quarterly Revieiu. 

A grand book, an honor to America. —Presbyterian Quarterly Review. 

Whoever may wish a perfect treat among the novelties of science, will find it 
in the "Physical Geography of the Sea." — Methodist Quarterly Review. 

Pre-eminently popular and practical. Some of the theories of this ingenious 
book have already brought thousands, or even millions of dollars into the hands 
of commerce. As a contribution to science, dhd, above all, to popular and prac- 
tical knowledge, hardly enough praise can be uttered. — N. V. Daily Times. 

Lieut. Maury's eulogy will be found, like that of the discoverer of the compass, 
in the practice of every future navigator, and his discoveries will kindle a pride 
in generations to come of his countrymen, akin to that we feel in the achieve- 
ments of science of Franklin and Fulton. — Journal of Commerce. 

Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, 

Franklin Square, New York. 



*»* Harper & Brothers will send the above Work by Mail, postage paid (for 
any distance in the United States under 3000 miles), on receipt of $1 50. 



HISTORY 

OF THE 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 

By BICHAED HILDBETH. 



First Series. From the First Settlement of the Country to the 

Adoption of the Federal Constitution. 3 vols. 8vo, Muslin, 
$6 00; Sheep, $6 75 ; Half Calf, $7 50. 

Second Series.— From the Adoption of the Federal Constitution 
to the End of the Sixteenth Congress. 3 vols. Svo, Muslin, 
$6 00; Sheep, $6 75; Half Calf, $7 50. 



The first attempt at a complete history of the United States. The reader who 
desires to inform himself iu all the particulars, military or political, of the 
American Revolution, will find that they have been scrupulously collected for 
him by Mr. Hildreth.— London Athenmum. 

It has condensed into consecutive narrative the substance of hundreds of 
volumes. — London Literary Gazette. 

The history of the Revolution is clearly and succinctly told. — N. A. Review. 
Mr. Hildreth's sources of information have evidently been ample and various, 
and intelligently examined, his materials arranged with a just idea of their im- 
portance in the story, while his judgments are well considered, unbiassed, and 
reliable. His style is clear, forcible, and sententious.— Christian Register. 

Mr. Hildreth is a very concise, vigorous, and impartial writer. His entire 
history is very accurate and interesting, and well worthy a place in every Amer- 
ican library. — Louisville Journal. 

He is laborious, conscientious, and accurate. As a methodical and very full 
narrative, its value is undoubted. — New Orleans Bee. 

The calmness and ability with which he has presented his narrative will give 
his work rank among the standard histories of the country. — Watchman and 
Observer. 

* * We have, therefore, read his book with distrust. But we are bound in 
candor to say that it seems to lis valuable and very fair. Mr. Hildreth has con- 
fined himself to, as far as possible, a dispassionate collection of facts from the 
documents he has consulted and copied, and his work fills a void that has sensi- 
bly been felt in private libraries. As a documentary history of the United 
States, we are free to commend it. — N. Y. Freeman's Journal. 

Mr. Hildreth has rendered an essential and permanent service. — Providence 
Daily Journal. 

The volumes will be regarded as indispensable — it will take its place as a 
standard work. The author's style is dignified, perspicuous, and vivacious. — 
Church Review. 

The work is very complete. The marginal dates, the two indexes, and run- 
ning heads at the tops of the pages, render it very convenient for reference, 
points which scholars will find all important for utility. — Newark Sentinel of 
Freedom. 



2 HILDRETH'S HISTORY OP THE UNITED STATES. 

We should like to know what other book upon American history, or even upon 
any limited portion of it, presents any thing like the same distinctness of view, 
or can at all compete with it in that "lucid order" which is one of the first mer- 
its of every historical work. — Boston Atlas. 

His work fills a want, and is therefore most welcome. Its positive merits, in 
addition to those we have before mentioned, are impartiality, steadiness of 
view, clear appreciation of character, and, in point of style, a terseness and con- 
ciseness not unlike Tacitus, with not a little, too, of Tacitean vigor of thought, 
stern sense of justice, sharp irony, and profound wisdom. — Methodist Quarterly 
Review. 

It occupies a space which has not yet been filled, and exhibits characteristics 
both of design and of composition, which entitle it to a distinguished place 
among the most important productions of American genius and scholarship. 
We welcome it as a simple, faithful, lucid, and elegant narrative of the great 
events of American history. It is not written in illustration of any favorite 
theory, it is not the expression of any ideal system, but an honest endeavor to 
present the facts in question in the pure, uncolored light of truth and reality. 
The impartiality, good judgment, penetration, and diligent research of the au- 
thor are conspicuous in its composition. — N. Y. Tribune. 

In our judgment, this is the ablest, best, and most judicious popular history 
of the United States that has yet appeared. It will be a standard book on 
American history, and will not fail to secure a high reputation as a writer to its 
modest and unpretending author. — Washington Union. 

This work is a valuable addition to our historical literature. It is the fruit 
of wide research and hard labor. It has those features of severe simplicity and 
truthfulness which will render it an enduring legacy to the future.— Christian 
Watchman. 

Mr. Hildreth's work will be a standard of reference for the student of Ameri- 
can history, and will become a favorite in proportion as it is known.— Nat. Era. 

His narrative is lucid and succinct, his facts carefully ascertained and skill- 
fully grouped, and his conclusions on all mooted questions are ably sustained 
and impartially weighed.— Neio Orleans Bee. 

The most valuable work of the kind yet issued. It presents, in a clear, grace- 
ful, and forcible style, a full and faithful picture of the country from its first 
settlement down to the end of the Sixteenth Congress. It is marked no less by 
its completeness than its accuracy and the beauty of its narrative.— Troy Daily 
Whig. 

In a most graphic, terse, and elegant style, it gives the history of each state, 
with its institutions, progress, and enterprise, civil, commercial, and agricul- 
tural, which makes the book a valuable addendum to the historical literatnre of 
the great republic. — St John's Morning News. 

No better chronicle of the more recent periods of our history has been given. — 
Albany Evening Journal. 

The prevailing characteristic of Hildreth's history is its stern and inflexible 
impartiality. — Boston Journal. 

The author has shown a most commendable industry. — Baltimore Patriot. 

The chief merits of Mr. Hildreth's work are fidelity and candor of spirit, and 
perspicuity and terseness of style. — Southern Literary Gazette. 

It is a plain, dignified, impartial, and fearless exhibition of facts. — Genesee 
Evangelist. 

The author's grouping of men and events is skillful, and renders his rapid nar- 
rative pleasant reading. — N. Y. Evening Post. 

These handsome volumes should be on the table of every American who de- 
sires the most thorough and clear report of our nation's history yet published. — 
Rochester Democrat. 

The history is a reliable, and, in all respects, an admirable one. — Ontario Re- 
pository. 

The author makes every thing plain and clear which he touches. — Southern 
Christian Advocate. 

A history of the United States that could be regarded by all men as a standard 
of authority, as well as a model of impartial labor. — Worcester Palladium. 

A work which should be in every American's hands. — Springfield Republican. 

His style is clear and forcible, and his work is very valuable on account of the 
political information it contains. — Savannah Republican, 



Works by Thomas Carlyle. 



History of Friedrich the Second, 

called Frederic the Great. 4 vols. 12nio, Muslin, 
$1 25 each. Vols. I. and II., with Portraits and 
Maps, just ready. 

The French Revolution. 

A History. Newly Revised by the Author, with 
Index, &c. 2 vols. 12mo, Muslin, $2 00; Half 
Calf, $3 70. 

Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches. 

Including the Supplement to the First Edition. 
With Elucidations and Connecting Narrative. 2 
vols. 12mo, Muslin, $2 00; Half Calf, $3 70. 

Past and Present. 

Chartism and Sartor Resartus. A New Edition. 
Complete in 1 vol. 12mo, Muslin, $1 00 ; Half 
Calf, $1 85. 



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